Related papers: Looking for Systematic Variations in the Stellar I…
We review our current knowledge on the IMF in nearby environments, massive star forming regions, super star clusters, starbursts and alike objects from studies of integrated light, and discuss the various techniques used to constrain the…
Observational and theoretical arguments increasingly suggest that the initial mass function (IMF) of stars may depend systematically on environment, yet most galaxy formation models to date assume a universal IMF. Here we investigate…
Explaining the initial mass function (IMF) of stars is a long-standing problem in astrophysics. The number of complex mechanisms involved in the process of star cluster formation, such as turbulence, magnetic fields and stellar feedback,…
Observations of both galaxies in the distant Universe and local starbursts are showing increasing evidence for very hard ionizing spectra that stellar population synthesis models struggle to reproduce. Here we explore the effects of the…
Observed variations in the slope of the initial stellar mass function are shown to be consistent with a model in which the protostellar gas is randomly sampled from hierarchical clouds at a rate proportional to the square root of the local…
In this paper we investigate whether the stellar initial mass function of early-type galaxies depends on their host environment. To this purpose, we have selected a sample of early-type galaxies from the SPIDER catalogue, characterized…
The presented study gives a comprehensive overview of the theory and the evidence for a systematically varying stellar initial mass function (IMF). Then we focus on the impact of this paradigm change, that is, from the universal invariant…
Massive stars define the upper limits of the star formation process, dominate the energetics of their local environs, and significantly affect the chemical evolution of galaxies. Their role in starburst galaxies and the early Universe is…
We address the turbulent fragmentation scenario for the origin of the stellar initial mass function (IMF), using a large set of numerical simulations of randomly driven supersonic MHD turbulence. The turbulent fragmentation model…
Given a flurry of recent claims for systematic variations in the stellar initial mass function (IMF), we carry out the first inventory of the observational evidence using different approaches. This includes literature results, as well as…
We measure the high-mass stellar initial mass function (IMF) from resolved stars in M33 young stellar clusters. Leveraging \textit{Hubble Space Telescope's} high resolving power, we fully model the IMF probabilistically. We first model the…
In this chapter, we review some historical understanding and recent advances on the Initial Mass Function (IMF) and the Core Mass Function (CMF), both in terms of observations and theories. We focus mostly on star formation in clustered…
We here present the first spatially-resolved study of the IMF in external galaxies derived using a dynamical tracer of the mass-to-light ratio. We use the kinematics of relaxed molecular gas discs in seven early-type galaxies (ETGs)…
We investigate the effect of a metallicity-dependent stellar initial mass function (IMF), as deduced observationally by Martin-Navarro et al. (2015c), on the inferred stellar masses and star formation rates (SFRs) of a representative sample…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is expressed by $\phi(m) \propto m^{-\alpha}$ with the slope $\alpha$, and known as the poorly-constrained but very important function in studies of star and galaxy formation. There are no sensible…
Some ultra-compact dwarf galaxies have large dynamical mass to light (M/L) ratios and also appear to contain an overabundance of LMXB sources, and some Milky Way globular clusters have a low concentration and appear to have a deficit of…
Many results in modern astrophysics rest on the notion that the Initial Mass Function (IMF) is universal. Our observations of HI selected galaxies in the light of H-alpha and the far-ultraviolet (FUV) challenge this notion. The flux ratio…
We use a recently-developed analytic model for the ISM structure from scales of GMCs through star-forming cores to explore how the pre-stellar core mass function (CMF) and, by extrapolation, stellar initial mass function (IMF) should depend…
The present paper extends our previous theory of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) by including the time-dependence, and by including the impact of magnetic field. The predicted mass spectra are similar to the time independent ones…
We present a simple statistical analysis of recent numerical simulations exploring the correlation between the core mass function obtained from the fragmentation of a molecular cloud and the stellar mass function which forms from these…