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Related papers: The systematically varying stellar IMF

200 papers

We demonstrate the feasibility of detecting directly low mass stars in unresolved super-star clusters with ages < 10 Myr using near-infrared spectroscopy at modest resolution (R ~ 1000). Such measurements could constrain the ratio of high…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Michael R. Meyer , Julia Greissl

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…

In the solar neighborhood, the Initial Mass Function (IMF) follows is canonically described by the Salpeter power-law slope for the high-mass range. The stellar IMF may directly result from a Core Mass Function (CMF) through accretion,…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-05-06 B. Thomasson , I. Joncour , E. Moraux , F. Motte , T. Yoo , A. Ginsburg

The observed stellar initial mass function (IMF) appears to vary, becoming bottom-heavy in the centres of the most massive, metal-rich early-type galaxies. It is still unclear what physical processes might cause this IMF variation. In this…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-10-07 Timothy A. Davis , Freeke van de Voort

In the context of the star formation through the fragmentation of an extremely metal-deficient protogalactic cloud, the gravitational collapse of filamentary gas clouds is explored with H$_2$ and HD chemistry. It is found by 1D…

Astrophysics · Physics 2016-01-27 Fumitaka Nakamura , Masayuki Umemura

We investigate the mass-metallicity relations for the gaseous (MZRgas) and stellar components (MZRstar) of local star-forming galaxies based on a representative sample from SDSS DR12. The mass-weighted average stellar metallicities are…

Observations and theories of the stellar initial mass function are reviewed. The universality and large total mass range of the power law portion of the IMF suggest a connection between stellar mass and cloud structure. The fractal patterns…

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

Many recent works have attempted to constrain the stellar initial mass function (IMF) inside massive clusters by comparing their dynamical mass estimates to the measured light. These studies have come to different conclusions, with some…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-11 N. Bastian , S. P. Goodwin

We consider the hypothesis that the formation of elliptical galaxies includes a phase in which star formation is mostly restricted to massive stars, with the bias towards high mass stars increasing with elliptical galaxy mass. The mass…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-28 Stephen E. Zepf , Joseph Silk

The aim of this paper is to quantify the amplitude of the predicted plateau in [alpha/Fe] ratios associated with the most metal-poor stars of a galaxy. We assume that the initial mass function in galaxies is steeper if the star formation…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-17 S. Recchi , F. Calura , B. K. Gibson , P. Kroupa

Star formation in the early Universe has left its imprint on the chemistry of observable stars in galaxies. We derive elemental abundances and the slope of the low-mass end of the initial mass function (IMF) for a sample of 25 very massive…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-04-08 Mark den Brok , Davor Krajnović , Eric Emsellem , Wilfried Mercier , Matthias Steinmetz , Peter M. Weilbacher

A low mass-to-light ratio for the stellar component of spiral galaxies (M/L<1 in the I-band) is advocated by various dynamical arguments and by recent cosmological simulations of the formation of these systems. We discuss this possibility…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-07 L. Portinari , J. Sommer-Larsen , R. Tantalo

The characteristic mass of stars at early times may have been higher than today owing to the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This study proposes that (1) the testable predictions of this "CMB-IMF" hypothesis are an increase in the…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Jason Tumlinson

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

The observed rest-UV luminosity function at cosmic dawn ($z \sim 8-14$) measured by JWST revealed an excess of UV-luminous galaxies relative to many pre-launch theoretical predictions. A high star-formation efficiency (SFE) and a top-heavy…

The initial mass function (IMF) succinctly characterizes a stellar population, provides a statistical measure of the end result of the star-formation process, and informs our under- standing of the structure and dynamical evolution of…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2011-07-25 Kevin R. Covey , Nate Bastian , Michael R. Meyer

Cosmological simulations of disc galaxy formation, when compared to the observed Tully-Fisher relation, suggest a low Mass-to-Light (M/L) ratio for the stellar component in spirals. We show that a number of "bottom-light" Initial Mass…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 L. Portinari , J. Sommer-Larsen , R. Tantalo

We analyse intermediate-resolution VLT FLAMES/Giraffe spectra of six ultra-compact dwarf (UCD) galaxies in the Fornax cluster. We obtained velocity dispersions and stellar population properties by full spectral fitting against PEGASE.HR…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Igor Chilingarian , Veronique Cayatte , Gilles Bergond

We demonstrate that the mass of the most massive star in a cluster correlates non-trivially with the cluster mass. A simple algorithm according to which a cluster is filled up with stars that are chosen randomly from the standard IMF but…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Carsten Weidner , Pavel Kroupa

We test whether the universal initial mass function (UIMF) or the integrated galaxial IMF (IGIMF) can be employed to explain the metallicity distribution (MD) of giants in the Galactic bulge. We make use of a single-zone chemical evolution…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Silvia K. Ballero , Pavel Kroupa , Francesca Matteucci