Related papers: Strong Gravitational Lensing and the Stellar IMF o…
Context: The determination of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) of massive galaxies is one of the open problems in cosmology. Strong gravitational lensing is one of the few methods that allow us to constrain the IMF outside of the…
We conduct a detailed investigation of the properties of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) in two massive early-type lens galaxies with velocity dispersions of sigma ~245 km/s and sigma ~325 km/s, for which both HST imaging and…
The Initial Mass Function (IMF) for massive galaxies can be constrained by combining stellar dynamics with strong gravitational lensing. However, this method is limited by degeneracies between the density profile of dark matter and the…
We obtain constraints on the slope of a universal stellar initial mass function (IMF) over a range of cosmic star-formation histories (SFH) using z=0.1 luminosity densities in the range from 0.2 to 2.2 microns. The age-IMF degeneracy of…
Using new long-slit spectroscopy obtained with X-Shooter at ESO-VLT, we study, for the first time, radial gradients of optical and Near-Infrared IMF-sensitive features in a representative sample of galaxies at the very high-mass end of the…
An essential component of galaxy formation theory is the stellar initial mass function (IMF), that describes the parent distribution of stellar mass in star forming regions. We present observational evidence in a sample of early-type…
We determine an absolute calibration of the initial mass function (IMF) of early-type galaxies, by studying a sample of 56 gravitational lenses identified by the SLACS Survey. Under the assumption of standard Navarro, Frenk & White dark…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is thought to be bottom-heavy in the cores of the most massive galaxies, with an excess of low mass stars compared to the Milky Way. However, studies of the kinematics of quiescent galaxies at 2<z<5…
We perform a spectroscopic study to constrain the stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) by using a large sample of 24,781 early-type galaxies from the SDSS-based SPIDER survey. Clear evidence is found of a trend between IMF and central…
We investigate the optical spectral region of spectra of 1000 stars searching for IMF-sensitive features to constrain the low-mass end of the initial mass function (IMF) slope in elliptical galaxies. We use the MILES stellar library in the…
We present new observations of the three nearest early-type galaxy (ETG) strong lenses discovered in the SINFONI Nearby Elliptical Lens Locator Survey (SNELLS). Based on their lensing masses, these ETGs were inferred to have a stellar…
Evidence from different probes of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) of massive early-type galaxies (ETGs) has repeatedly converged on IMFs more bottom-heavy than in the Milky Way (MW). This consensus has come under scrutiny due to…
This work aims to study the distribution of luminous and dark matter in Coma early-type galaxies. Dynamical masses obtained under the assumption that mass follows light do not match with the masses of strong gravitational lens systems of…
We conduct a detailed lensing, dynamics and stellar population analysis of nine massive lens early-type galaxies (ETGs) from the X-Shooter Lens Survey (XLENS). Combining gravitational lensing constraints from HST imaging with…
We investigate the cosmic evolution of the internal structure of massive early-type galaxies over half of the age of the Universe. We perform a joint lensing and stellar dynamics analysis of a sample of 81 strong lenses from the SL2S and…
We present an investigation about the shape of the initial mass function (IMF) of early-type galaxies (ETGs), based on a joint lensing and dynamical analysis, and on stellar population synthesis models, for a sample of 55 lens ETGs…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a fundamental property in the measurement of stellar masses and galaxy star formation histories. In this work we focus on the most massive galaxies in the nearby universe…
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…
At present, the main challenge to the interpretation of variations in gravity-sensitive line strengths as driven by a non-universal initial mass function (IMF), lies in understanding the effect of other parameters describing unresolved…
It is now well-established that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) can be determined from the absorption line spectra of old stellar systems, and this has been used to measure the IMF and its variation across the early-type galaxy…