Related papers: Testing the Turbulent Origin of the Stellar Initia…
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…
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…
We present a new measurement of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) based on ultra-deep, high-resolution photometry of >5,000 stars in the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) galaxy. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced…
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 stellar initial mass function (IMF) is commonly interpreted to be a scale-invariant probability density distribution function (PDF) such that many small clusters yield the same IMF as one massive cluster of the same combined number of…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is playing a critical role in the history of our universe. We propose a theory that is based solely on local processes, namely the dust opacity limit, the tidal forces and the properties of the…
We discuss results from numerical simulations of star cluster formation in the turbulent interstellar medium (ISM). The thermodynamic behavior of the star-forming gas plays a crucial role in fragmentation and determines the stellar mass…
(Abridged). We present numerical simulations of isothermal, MHD, supersonic turbulence, designed to test various hypotheses frequently assumed in star formation(SF) theories. We consider three simulations, each with a different combination…
Observed variations in the IMF are reviewed with an emphasis on environmental density. The remote field IMF studied in the LMC by several authors is clearly steeper than most cluster IMFs, which have slopes close to the Salpeter value.…
We propose a model for the density statistics in supersonic turbulence, which play a crucial role in star-formation and the physics of the interstellar medium (ISM). Motivated by [Hopkins, MNRAS, 430, 1880 (2013)], the model considers the…
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…
Identifying the processes that determine the initial mass function of stars (IMF) is a fundamental problem in star formation theory. One of the major uncertainties is the exact chemical state of the star forming gas and its influence on the…
Accurate specification of a likelihood function is becoming increasingly difficult in many inference problems in astronomy. As sample sizes resulting from astronomical surveys continue to grow, deficiencies in the likelihood function lead…
We calculate the integrated galactic initial stellar mass function (IGIMF) in the presence of IMF variations in clusters. IMF Variations for a population of clusters are taken into account in the form of Gaussian distributions of the IMF…
We review the properties of turbulent molecular clouds (MCs), focusing on the physical processes that influence star formation (SF). MC formation appears to occur during large-scale compression of the diffuse ISM driven by supernovae,…
We study star cluster formation in a low-metallicity environment using three dimensional hydrodynamic simulations. Starting from a turbulent cloud core, we follow the formation and growth of protostellar systems with different metallicities…
We derive an analytical theory of the prestellar core initial mass function based on an extension of the Press-Schechter statistical formalism. With the same formalism, we also obtain the mass spectrum for the non self-gravitating clumps…
Dealing numerically with the turbulent nature and non-linearity of the physical processes involved in the ISM requires the use of sophisticated numerical schemes coupled to HD and MHD mathematical models. SNe are the main drivers of the…
We use numerical simulations of the fragmentation of a 1000 solar mass molecular cloud and the formation of a stellar cluster to study how the initial conditions for star formation affect the resulting initial mass function (IMF). In…
Turbulence plays a critical role in regulating star formation in molecular clouds and is also observed in simulations of primordial halos that host Population III (Pop III) stars. The relative velocity between baryons and dark matter at the…