Related papers: Using the Modified Lognormal Power Law Distributio…

As most if not all stars are born in stellar clusters the shape of the mass function of the field stars is not only determined by the initial mass function of stars (IMF) but also by the cluster mass function (CMF). In order to quantify…

We present the new technique for the determination of the low-mass slope of the stellar mass function from the pixel-space fitting of integrated light spectra. This technique is the extension of the NBursts full spectral fitting technique.…

We introduce a new dual power law (DPL) probability distribution function for the mass distribution of stellar and substellar objects at birth, otherwise known as the initial mass function (IMF). The model contains both deterministic and…

We show the results of deep V and I HST photometry of 6 rich star clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud with different ages and metallicities. The number of stars with measured magnitudes in each cluster varies from about 3000 to 10000. We…

As an introduction of a kinematic survey of Magellanic Cloud (MC) star clusters, we report on the dynamical masses and mass-to-light ($M/L$) ratios of NGC 419 (SMC) and NGC 1846 (LMC). We have obtained more than one hundred high-resolution…

When an universal untruncated star cluster initial mass function (CIMF) described by a power-law distribution is assumed, the mass of the most massive star cluster in a galaxy (M_max) is the result of the size-of-sample (SoS) effect. This…

We show that we can obtain a good fit to the present day stellar mass functions (MFs) of a large sample of young and old Galactic clusters in the range 0.1 - 10 Msolar with a tapered power law distribution function with an exponential…

We have undertaken the largest systematic study of the high-mass stellar initial mass function (IMF) to date using the optical color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of 85 resolved, young (4 Myr < t < 25 Myr), intermediate mass star clusters…

We attempt to evaluate whether the integrated galactic IMF (IGIMF) is expected to be steeper than the IMF within individual clusters through direct evaluation of whether there is a systematic dependence of maximum stellar mass on cluster…

We reanalyze the catalogs of molecular clouds in the Local Group to determine the parameters of their mass distributions in a uniform manner. The analysis uses the error-in-variables method of parameter estimation which accounts not only…

The dichotomy between a universal mass function (IMF) and a variable IMF which depends on local physical parameters characterises observational and theoretical stellar astronomy. In this contribution the available distributions of…

In a recent preprint, Hearin et al. (2012,H12) suggest that the halo mass-richness calibration of clusters can be improved by using the difference in the magnitude of the brightest and the second brightest galaxy (magnitude gap) as an…

(abridged) The case can be made for a rather universal stellar IMF form that can be approximated by a two-part power-law function in the stellar regime. However, there exists a possible hint for a systematic variation with metallicity. A…

We present a maximum-likelihood analysis of galaxy-galaxy lensing effects in galaxy clusters and in the field. The aim is to determine the accuracy and robustness of constraints that can be obtained on galaxy halo properties in both…

We present a modern machine learning approach for cluster dynamical mass measurements that is a factor of two improvement over using a conventional scaling relation. Different methods are tested against a mock cluster catalog constructed…

We present a thorough literature study of the most-massive star, m_max, in several young star clusters in order to assess whether or not star clusters are populated from the stellar initial mass function (IMF) by random sampling over the…

In the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), there have been very few clusters observed with ages between 4 and 11 Gyr. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the `LMC age gap'. We constructed a model of the cluster age distribution aimed at…

Deep images of the galactic globular cluster M4 taken at various locations with the NIC3 and the WFPC2 cameras on HST were used to derive detailed local optical and near IR luminosity functions. White dwarfs have been detected for the first…

The luminosity function (LF) of young star clusters is often approximated by a power law function. For clusters in a wide range of galactic environments this has resulted in fit indices near -2, but on average slightly steeper. A…

We present the implementation of a Bayesian formalism within the Stochastically Lighting Up Galaxies (SLUG) stellar population synthesis code, which is designed to investigate variations in the initial mass function (IMF) of star clusters.…