English
Related papers

Related papers: The stellar IMF from Isothermal MHD Turbulence

200 papers

Few topics in astronomy initiate such vigorous discussion as whether or not the initial mass function (IMF) of stars is universal, or instead sensitive to the initial conditions of star formation. The distinction is of critical importance:…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2010-12-01 Nate Bastian , Kevin R. Covey , Michael R. Meyer

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…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-09-25 John Scalo

A popular theory of star formation is gravito-turbulent fragmentation, in which self-gravitating structures are created by turbulence-driven density fluctuations. Simple theories of isothermal fragmentation successfully reproduce the core…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2018-04-25 David Guszejnov , Mark R. Krumholz , Philip F. Hopkins

Stars are amongst the most fundamental structures of our Universe. They comprise most of the baryonic and luminous mass of galaxies, synthethise heavy elements, and injec\ t mass, momentum, and energy into the interstellar medium. They are…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-04-16 Patrick Hennebelle , Michael Y. Grudić

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…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-06-29 Meng Gu , Jenny Greene , Andrew B. Newman , Christina Kreisch , Matthew Quenneville , Chung-Pei Ma , John P. Blakeslee

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…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 B. G. Elmegreen

The theory for the formation of the first population of stars (Pop III) predicts an initial mass function (IMF) dominated by high-mass stars, in contrast to the present-day IMF, which tends to yield mostly stars with masses less than 1…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2016-02-17 Gustavo Dopcke , Simon C. O. Glover , Paul C. Clark , Ralf S. Klessen

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a fundamental property of star formation, offering key insight into the physics driving the process as well as informing our understanding of stellar populations, their by-products, and their…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-03-14 M. W. Hosek , J. R. Lu , M. Andersen , T. Do , D. Kim , N. Z. Rui , P. Boyle , B. F. Williams , S. Chakrabarti , R. L. Beaton

We undertake a systematic analysis of the early (< 0.5 Myr) evolution of clustering and the stellar initial mass function in turbulent fragmentation simulations. These large scale simulations for the first time offer the opportunity for a…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-05-18 Th. Maschberger , C. J. Clarke , I. A. Bonnell , P. Kroupa

Turbulence is a critical ingredient for star formation, yet its role for the initial mass function (IMF) is not fully understood. Here we perform magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) simulations of star cluster formation including gravity,…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-12-07 Sajay Sunny Mathew , Christoph Federrath , Amit Seta

Super-sonic turbulence fragments molecular clouds (MC) into a very complex density field with density contrasts of several orders of magnitude. A fraction of the gas is locked into dense and gravitationally bound cores, which collapse as…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Paolo Padoan , AAke Nordlund , Ornolfur Einar Rognvaldsson , Alyssa Goodman

Most structural and evolutionary properties of galaxies strongly rely on the stellar initial mass function (IMF), namely the distribution of the stellar mass formed in each episode of star formation. As the IMF shapes the stellar population…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-01-31 Jiadong Li , Chao Liu , Zhi-Yu Zhang , Hao Tian , Xiaoting Fu , Jiao Li , Zhi-Qiang Yan

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…

The distribution of stellar masses that form in one star-formation event in a given volume of space is called the initial mass function (IMF). The IMF has been estimated from low-mass brown dwarfs to very massive stars. Combining IMF…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-07 Pavel Kroupa

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

Cosmological simulations are reaching the resolution necessary to study ultra-faint dwarf galaxies. Observations indicate that in small populations, the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is not fully populated; rather, stars are sampled…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-02-24 Elaad Applebaum , Alyson M. Brooks , Thomas R. Quinn , Charlotte R. Christensen

We test the hypothesis that the initial mass function (IMF) is determined by the density probability distribution function (PDF) produced by supersonic turbulence. We compare 14 simulations of star cluster formation in 50 solar mass…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-12-07 David Liptai , Daniel J. Price , James Wurster , Matthew R. Bate

We propose to interpret the stellar IMF as a property of the turbulence in the star--forming gas. Gravitationally unstable density enhancements in the turbulent flow collapse and form stars. Their mass distribution can be derived…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-11-11 Paolo Padoan , Ake Nordlund

We explore the assumption, widely used in many astrophysical calculations, that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is universal across all galaxies. By considering both a canonical Salpeter-like IMF and a non-universal IMF, we are able…

We present a simple statistical analysis of recent numerical simulations exploring the correlation between the core mass function obtained from the fragmentation of a molecular cloud and the stellar mass function which forms from these…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-20 Gilles Chabrier , Patrick Hennebelle