Related papers: Planetesimal Initial Mass Functions following Diff…
The solar system's dynamical state can be explained by an orbital instability among the giant planets. A recent model has proposed that the giant planet instability happened during terrestrial planet formation. This scenario has been shown…
Turbulence in protoplanetary disks affects planet formation in many ways. While small dust particles are mainly affected by the aerodynamical coupling with turbulent gas velocity fields, planetesimals and larger bodies are more affected by…
The birth of stars and the formation of galaxies are cornerstones of modern astrophysics. While much is known about how galaxies globally and their stars individually form and evolve, one fundamental property that affects both remains…
Recent years have seen growing interest in the streaming instability as a candidate mechanism to produce planetesimals. However, these investigations have been limited to small-scale simulations. We now present the results of a global…
Supersonic turbulence fragments the interstellar medium into dense sheets, filaments, cores and large low density voids. The turbulence is driven on large scales, probably predominantly by supernovae. The scaling properties of supersonic…
We study the gravitational instability (GI) of small solids in a gas disk as a mechanism to form planetesimals. Dissipation from gas drag introduces secular GI, which proceeds even when standard GI criteria for a critical density or…
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…
A brief review is given of the basic observed features of the stellar IMF, and also of some of the theoretical ideas and simulations that may help to explain these features. The characteristic stellar mass of order one solar mass may derive…
The process leading to the formation of the terrestrial planet remains elusive. In a previous publication, we have shown that, if the first generation of planetesimals forms in a ring at about 1 AU and the gas disk's density peaks at the…
The initial mass function (IMF) is an essential tool with which to study star formation processes. We have initiated the photometric survey of young open clusters in the Galaxy, from which the stellar IMFs are obtained in a homogeneous way.…
The present paper extends our previous theory of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) by including the time-dependence, and by including the impact of magnetic field. The predicted mass spectra are similar to the time independent ones…
Classical theories for the stellar initial mass function (IMF) predict a peak mass which scales with the properties of the molecular cloud. In this work, we explore a new theory proposed by Lee & Hennebelle (2018). The idea is that the…
Several observational and theoretical studies suggest that the initial mass function (IMF) slope for massive stars in globular clusters (GCs) depends on the initial cloud density and metallicity, such that the IMF becomes increasingly…
We study the formation of planetesimals in protoplanetary disks from the gravitational collapse of solid over-densities generated via the streaming instability. To carry out these studies, we implement and test a particle-mesh self-gravity…
We investigate the formation process of planetesimals from the dust layer by the gravitational instability in the gas disk using local $N$-body simulations. The gas is modeled as a background laminar flow. We study the formation process of…
In a turbulent proto-planetary disk, dust grains undergo large density fluctuations and under the right circumstances, these grain overdensities can overcome shear, turbulent, and gas pressure support to collapse under self-gravity (forming…
A wealth of observations recently challenged the notion of a universal stellar initial mass function (IMF) by showing evidences in favour of a variability of this statistical indicator as a function of galaxy properties. I present…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is critical to our understanding of star formation and the effects of young stars on their environment. On large scales, it enables us to use tracers such as UV or Halpha emission to estimate the star…
We examine the cosmic evolution of a stellar initial mass function (IMF) in galaxies that varies with the Jeans mass in the interstellar medium, paying particular attention to the K-band stellar mass to light ratio (M/L_K) of present-epoch…
The stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) seems to be close to universal in the local star-forming regions. However, this quantity of a newborn stellar population responds differently at gas metallicities $Z \sim$ $Z_\odot$ than $Z$ = 0. A…