Related papers: An Observational Perspective of the IMF: Progress …
Observations of normal galactic star-forming regions suggest there is widespread near-uniformity in the initial stellar mass function (IMF) in spite of diverse physical conditions. Fluctuations may come largely from statistical effects and…
The debate about the universality of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) revolves around two competing lines of evidence. While measurements in the Milky Way, an archetypal spiral galaxy, seem to support an invariant IMF, the observed…
Because direct measurements require resolved stellar populations including low-mass stars, determining the stellar initial mass function (IMF) has been a historically difficult problem even within our own Galaxy and impossible everywhere…
The measured star-formation rates (SFRs) of galaxies comprise an important constraint on galaxy evolution and also on their cosmological boundary conditions. Any available tracer of the SFR depends on the shape of the mass-distribution of…
The observed distribution of IMF shapes can be understood as statistical sampling from a universal IMF and variations that result from stellar-dynamical processes. However, young star clusters appear to have an IMF biased towards low-mass…
The stellar initial-mass function (IMF) represents a fundamental quantity in astrophysics and cosmology, describing the mass distribution of stars from low to very-high masses. It is intimately linked to a wide variety of topics, including…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) describes the distribution in stellar masses produced from a burst of star formation. For more than fifty years, the implicit assumption underpinning most areas of research involving the IMF has been…
Does the IMF vary? Is it significantly different in metal-rich environments than in metal-poor ones? Theoretical work predicts this to be the case. But in order to provide robust empirical evidence for this, the researcher must understand…
We propose that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is universal in the sense that its functional form arises as a consequence of the statistics of random supersonic flows. A model is developed for the origin of the stellar IMF, that…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) describes how many stars form at which mass. Despite recent observational progress, many fundamental properties of the IMF are still unknown. Specifically the question, whether starbursts are biased…
It is usually assumed that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) takes a universal form and that there exists a direct mapping between this and the distribution of natal core masses (the core mass function, CMF). The IMF and CMF have been…
Accurate specification of a likelihood function is becoming increasingly difficult in many inference problems in astronomy. As sample sizes resulting from astronomical surveys continue to grow, deficiencies in the likelihood function lead…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) integrated over an entire galaxy is an integral over all separate star-formation events. Since most stars form in star clusters with different masses the integrated IMF becomes an integral of the…
Observations and theory of the IMF are briefly reviewed. Slight variations have been observed, although they are difficult to prove unambiguously. Most detailed theoretical models reproduce the IMF, but because they use different…
The stellar initial mass function (sIMF) describes the distribution of stellar masses formed in a single star formation event in a molecular cloud clump. It is fundamental to astrophysics and cosmology, shaping our understanding of…
The stellar mass distribution in star-forming regions, stellar clusters and associations, the Initial Mass Function (IMF), appears to be invariant across different star-forming environments, and is consistent with the IMF observed in the…
A wealth of observations recently challenged the notion of a universal stellar initial mass function (IMF) by showing evidences in favour of a variability of this statistical indicator as a function of galaxy properties. I present…
(abridged) The {stellar IMF} has been found to be essentially invariant. While some apparent differences are seen, the uncertainties inherent to this game do not allow a firm conclusion to be made that the IMF varies systematically with…
The hypothesis of a universal initial mass function (IMF) -- motivated by observations in nearby stellar systems -- has been recently challenged by the discovery of a systematic variation of the IMF with the central velocity dispersion,…
Observations have not yielded convincing results concerning the form of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) or its variations in space and time, so it is proposed that theoretical models may provide useful guidance. Several classes of…