Related papers: A new method for deriving the stellar birth functi…
Observational studies are showing that the galaxy-wide stellar initial mass function are top-heavy in galaxies with high star-formation rates (SFRs). Calculating the integrated galactic stellar initial mass function (IGIMF) as a function of…
We aim to investigate the connections existing between the density profiles of the stellar populations used to define a gravitationally bound stellar system and their star formation history: we do this by developing a general framework…
We derive Surface Brightness Fluctuations (SBF) and integrated magnitudes in the V- and I-bands using Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) archival data. The sample includes 14 galaxies covering a wide range of physical properties: morphology,…
Star formation happens in a clustered way which is why the star cluster population of a particular galaxy is closely related to the star formation history of this galaxy. From the probabilistic nature of a mass function follows that the…
It is currently common to use spatially unresolved multi-filter broad-band photometry to determine the masses of individual stellar clusters (and hence the cluster mass function, CMF). I analyze the stochastic effects introduced by the…
The complexity of constraining the stellar initial mass function (IMF) in early-type galaxies cannot be overstated, given the necessity of both very high signal-to-noise (S/N) data and the difficulty of breaking the strong degeneracies that…
We present a new library of semi-empirical stellar population models that are based on the empirical MILES and semi-empirical sMILES stellar libraries. The models span a large range of age and metallicity, in addition to an [$\alpha$/Fe]…
We present an analytical determination of the star formation rate (SFR) in molecular clouds, based on a time-dependent extension of our analytical theory of the stellar initial mass function (IMF). The theory yields SFR's in good agreement…
Whilst the star formation rate (SFR) of molecular clouds and galaxies is key in understanding galaxy evolution, the physical processes which determine the SFR remain unclear. This uncertainty about the underlying physics has resulted in…
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…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a key property of stellar populations. There is growing evidence that the classical star-formation mechanism by the direct cloud fragmentation process has difficulties reproducing the observed…
When a detailed model of a stellar population is unavailable, it is most common to assume that stellar masses are independently and identically distributed according to some distribution: the universal initial mass function (IMF). However,…
Stars form in clustered environments, but how they form when the available resources are shared is still not well understood. A related question is whether the IMF is in fact universal across galactic environments, a galactic initial mass…
We present a novel method to retrieve the chemical structure of galaxies using integral field spectroscopy data through the stellar Metallicity Distribution Function (MDF). This is the probability distribution of observing stellar…
In this work, we present Stellar Spectra Factory (SSF), a tool to generate empirical-based stellar spectra from arbitrary stellar atmospheric parameters. The relative flux-calibrated empirical spectra can be predicted by SSF given arbitrary…
Star-forming galaxies (SFGs) display a continuous distribution of specific star formation rates (sSFR) which can be approximated by the superposition of two log-normal distributions. The 1st of these encompasses the main sequence (MS) of…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is central to our interpretation of astronomical observables and to our understanding of most baryonic processes within galaxies. The universality of the IMF, suggested by observations in our own…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is commonly assumed to be an invariant probability density distribution function of initial stellar masses being represented by the canonical IMF. As a consequence the galaxy-wide IMF (gwIMF), defined…
This paper revisits the classical Kennicutt method for inferring the stellar initial mass function (IMF) from the integrated light properties of galaxies. The large size, uniform high quality data set from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR4…
Simple stellar population (SSP) synthesis models are useful tools for studying the nature of unresolved star clusters in external galaxies. However, the plethora of currently available SSP models gives rise to significant and poorly…