English
Related papers

Related papers: Evidence for top-heavy stellar initial mass functi…

200 papers

Observed variations in the IMF are reviewed with an emphasis on environmental density. The remote field IMF studied in the LMC by several authors is clearly steeper than most cluster IMFs, which have slopes close to the Salpeter value.…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-11-11 Bruce G. Elmegreen

The initial mass function (IMF) succinctly characterizes a stellar population, provides a statistical measure of the end result of the star-formation process, and informs our under- standing of the structure and dynamical evolution of…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2011-07-25 Kevin R. Covey , Nate Bastian , Michael R. Meyer

[abridged] Stars are thought to be formed predominantly in clusters. The clusters are formed following a cluster initial mass function (CMF) similar to the stellar initial mass function (IMF). Both the IMF and the CMF favour low-mass…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2012-05-31 M. R. Haas , P. Anders

Spectroscopic analyses of gravity-sensitive line strengths give growing evidence towards an excess of low-mass stars in massive early-type galaxies (ETGs). Such a scenario requires a bottom-heavy initial mass function (IMF). However, strong…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-23 I. Ferreras , C. Weidner , A. Vazdekis , F. La Barbera

Analyses of strong gravitational lenses, galaxy-scale kinematics, and absorption line stellar population synthesis (SPS) have all concluded that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) varies within the massive early-type galaxy (ETG)…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-11-29 Alexa Villaume , Jean Brodie , Charlie Conroy , Aaron J. Romanowsky , Pieter van Dokkum

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…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-08-31 Bart Clauwens , Joop Schaye , Marijn Franx

The evolution of the global stellar mass function (MF) of star clusters is studied based on a large set of N-body simulations of clusters with a range of initial masses, initial concentrations, in circular or elliptical orbits in different…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-15 Henny J. G. L. M. Lamers , Holger Baumgardt , Mark Gieles

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) of early-type galaxies is the combination of the IMF of the stellar population formed in-situ and that of accreted stellar populations. Using as an observable the effective IMF $\alpha_{IMF}$, defined…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-01-18 Alessandro Sonnenfeld , Carlo Nipoti , Tommaso Treu

We present observational evidence of the correlation between the high-mass slope of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) in young star clusters and their stellar surface density, $\sigma_{*}$. When the high-mass end of the IMF is…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-11-03 Sami Dib

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) in the early universe is essential to understand the formation of ancient galaxies. To this end, we conduct a series of long-term radiation hydrodynamic simulations following star cluster formation,…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-12-22 Sunmyon Chon , Takashi Hosokawa , Kazuyuki Omukai , Raffaella Schneider

There is substantial evidence that the initial mass function (IMF) may be a function of the local star formation conditions. In particular, the IMF is predicted to flatten with increasing local luminosity density, with the formation of…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-30 Jason A. Taylor

The first stars fundamentally transformed the early Universe through their production of energetic radiation and the first heavy chemical elements. The impact on cosmic evolution sensitively depends on their initial mass function (IMF),…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Anna Frebel , Jarrett L. Johnson , Volker Bromm

We investigated a volume-limited sample of LAMOST main-sequence stars with masses from 0.25 to 1 $M_{\odot}$ and distances of 150-350 pc to explore how the stellar initial mass function (IMF) varies with metallicity. We corrected the…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2025-11-07 Dan Qiu , Chao Liu , Jennifer A. Johnson , Jiadong Li , Bo Zhang

Several recent observational studies have concluded that the initial mass function (IMF) of stars varies systematically with galaxy properties such as velocity dispersion. In this paper, we investigate the effect of linking the circular…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-18 Sean L. McGee , Ryosuke Goto , Michael L. Balogh

Several independent lines of evidence suggest that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) in early-type galaxies becomes increasingly `bottom-heavy' with increasing galaxy mass and/or velocity dispersion, sigma. Here we consider evidence…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-16 Charlie Conroy , Aaron A. Dutton , Genevieve J. Graves , J. Trevor Mendel , Pieter G. van Dokkum

Stars do not form continuously distributed over star forming galaxies. They form in star clusters of different masses. This nature of clustered star formation is taken into account in the theory of the integrated galactic stellar initial…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2014-11-20 Jan Pflamm-Altenburg , Pavel Kroupa

The heavyweight stellar initial mass function (IMF) observed in the cores of massive early-type galaxies (ETGs) has been linked to formation of their cores in an initial swiftly-quenched rapid starburst. However, the outskirts of ETGs are…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-04-19 Padraig D. Alton , Russell J. Smith , John R. Lucey

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is predicted to depend upon the temperature of gas in star-forming molecular clouds. The introduction of an additional parameter, $T_{IMF}$ , into photometric template fitting, allows galaxies to be…

The observed brightness of the Tully-Fisher relation suggests a low stellar M/L ratio and a "bottom-light" IMF in disc galaxies, but the corresponding efficiency of chemical enrichment tends to exceed the observational estimates. Either…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-11-11 L. Portinari

Recent studies suggest that the initial mass function (IMF) of the first stars was likely to be extremely top-heavy, unlike what is observed at present. We propose a scenario to generate fragmentation to lower masses once the first massive…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-07 R. Schneider , A. Ferrara , P. Natarajan , K. Omukai