Related papers: Explaining the stellar initial mass function with …
Observations of mergers of multi-compact object systems offer insights to the formation processes of massive stars in globular clusters. Simulations of stellar clusters, may be used to understand and interpret observations. Simulations…
Residual-gas expulsion after cluster formation has recently been shown to leave an imprint in the low-mass present-day stellar mass function (PDMF) which allowed the estimation of birth conditions of some Galactic globular clusters (GCs)…
I present an overview of the hierarchy of structures existing in the interstellar medium (ISM) and the possible mechanisms that cause the fragmentation of one level into the next, with the formation of stars as its last step. Within this…
Turbulent fragmentation determines where and when protostellar cores form, and how they contract and grow in mass from the surrounding cloud material. Molecular cloud regions without turbulent driving sources, or where turbulence is driven…
Star formation is intimately linked to the dynamical evolution of molecular clouds. Turbulent fragmentation determines where and when protostellar cores form, and how they contract and grow in mass via accretion from the surrounding cloud…
It has frequently been suggested that the stellar IMF in galaxies was top-heavy at early times. This would be plausible physically if the IMF depends on a mass scale such as the Jeans mass that was higher at earlier times because of the…
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…
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 formation mechanism of massive stars remains one of the main open problems in astrophysics, in particular the relationship between the mass of the most massive stars, and that of the cores in which they form. Numerical simulations of…
The Padoan and Nordlund model of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is derived from low order statistics of supersonic turbulence, neglecting gravity (e.g. gravitational fragmentation, accretion and merging). In this work the…
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,…
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…
Hennebelle & Chabrier 2008 (HC08) attempted to derive the stellar IMF as a consequence of turbulent density fluctuations, using an argument similar to Press & Schechter 1974 for Gaussian random fields. Like that example, however, this…
We investigate whether the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is universal, or whether it varies significantly among young stellar clusters in the Milky Way. We propose a method to uncover the range of variation of the parameters that…
Observational constraints on the theory of the IMF are reviewed. These observations include the new result that star formation is very rapid, usually going from start to finish in only 1 or 2 dynamical times on a wide range of scales. This…
In our SCUBA survey of Perseus, we find that the fraction of protostellar cores increases towards higher masses and the most massive cores are all protostellar. In this paper we consider the possible explanations of this apparent mass…
The functional form of the galaxy-wide stellar initial mass function is of fundamental importance for understanding galaxies. So far this stellar initial mass function has been assumed to be identical to the IMF observed directly in star…
One of the key mysteries of star formation is the origin of the stellar initial mass function (IMF). The IMF is observed to be nearly universal in the Milky Way and its satellites, and significant variations are only inferred in extreme…
We propose a new model for the evolution of a star cluster's System Mass Function (SMF). The model involves both turbulent fragmentation and competitive accretion. Turbulent fragmentation creates low-mass seed proto-systems (i.e. single and…
In this contributed talk I present recent results on the connection between stellar population properties and the normalisation of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) measured using stellar dynamics, based on a large sample of 260…