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The past two decades have seen dramatic progress in our knowledge of the population of stars of age $\lesssim$150 Myr that lie within $\sim$100 pc of the Sun. Most such stars are found in loose kinematic groups ("nearby young moving…
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…
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…
The current knowledge on the stellar IMF is documented. It appears to become top-heavy when the star-formation rate density surpasses about 0.1Msun/(yr pc^3) on a pc scale and it may become increasingly bottom-heavy with increasing…
The heavyweight stellar initial mass function (IMF) observed in the cores of massive early-type galaxies (ETGs) has been linked to formation of their cores in an initial swiftly-quenched rapid starburst. However, the outskirts of ETGs are…
Our knowledge of the population of young (age <=750 Myr) stars that lie within ~120 pc of the Sun is rapidly accelerating. The vast majority of these nearby, young stars can be placed in kinematically coherent groups (nearby, young moving…
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…
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…
The stellar initial mas function (IMF) has been described as being invariant, bottom heavy or top-heavy in extremely dense star burst conditions. To provide usable observable diagnostic we calculate redshift dependent spectral energy…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) describes the mass distribution of stars at the time of their formation and is of fundamental importance for many areas of astrophysics. The IMF is reasonably well constrained in the disk of the Milky…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is predicted to depend upon the temperature of gas in star-forming molecular clouds. The introduction of an additional parameter, $T_{IMF}$ , into photometric template fitting, allows galaxies to be…
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…
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,…
Stars form in clustered environments, but how they form when the available resources are shared is still not well understood. A related question is whether the IMF is in fact universal across galactic environments, a galactic initial mass…
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…
The spectral absorption lines in early-type galaxies contain a wealth of information regarding the detailed abundance pattern, star formation history, and stellar initial mass function (IMF) of the underlying stellar population. Using our…
We present a method for investigating variations in the upper end of the stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) by probing the production rate of ionizing photons in unresolved, compact star clusters with ages <~10 Myr and with different…
A method is presented here for investigating variations in the upper end of the stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) by probing the production rate of ionizing photons in unresolved, compact star clusters with ages<10 Myr and covering a…
We review the long-term survival chances of young massive star clusters (YMCs), hallmarks of intense starburst episodes often associated with violent galaxy interactions. We address the key question as to whether at least some of these YMCs…
The measured star-formation rates (SFRs) of galaxies comprise an important constraint on galaxy evolution and also on their cosmological boundary conditions. Any available tracer of the SFR depends on the shape of the mass-distribution of…