Related papers: Does God play dice with star clusters?
Star formation rates (SFR) larger than 1000 Msun/ yr are observed in extreme star bursts. This leads to the formation of star clusters with masses > 10^6 Msun in which crowding of the pre-stellar cores may lead to a change of the stellar…
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) 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…
A stochastic model of fragmentation of molecular clouds has been developed for studying the resulting Initial Mass Function (IMF) where the number of fragments, inter-occurrence time of fragmentation, masses and velocities of the fragments…
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…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) describes how many stars form at which mass. Despite recent observational progress, many fundamental properties of the IMF are still unknown. Specifically the question, whether starbursts are biased…
We have used multi-wavelength Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 data of the starbursting spiral galaxy M83 in order to measure variations in the upper end of the stellar initial mass function (uIMF) using the production rate of ionizing photons…
Although the stellar initial mass function (IMF) has only been directly determined in star clusters it has been manifoldly applied on galaxy-wide scales. But taking the clustered nature of star formation into account the galaxy-wide IMF is…
Observational studies are showing that the galaxy-wide stellar initial mass function are top-heavy in galaxies with high star-formation rates (SFRs). Calculating the integrated galactic stellar initial mass function (IGIMF) as a function of…
Using our Binary Population And Spectral Synthesis (BPASS) code we explore the effects on star-formation rate indicators of stochastically sampling the stellar initial mass function, adding a cluster mass dependent stellar upper-mass limit…
Observations have not yielded convincing results concerning the form of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) or its variations in space and time, so it is proposed that theoretical models may provide useful guidance. Several classes of…
We present a uniform analysis of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) from integrated light spectroscopy of 15 compact stellar systems (11 globular clusters in M31 and 4 ultra compact dwarfs in the Virgo cluster, UCDs) and two brightest…
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…
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…
Analyses of strong gravitational lenses, galaxy-scale kinematics, and absorption line stellar population synthesis (SPS) have all concluded that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) varies within the massive early-type galaxy (ETG)…
We investigate how the dynamical state of a turbulently supported, 1000 solar mass, molecular cloud affects the properties of the cluster it forms, focusing our discussion on the star formation efficiency (SFE) and the initial mass function…
Three component models of the IMF are made to consider possible origins for the observed relative variations in the numbers of brown dwarfs, solar-to-intermediate mass stars, and high mass stars. Three distinct physical processes are noted.…
Over the past years observations of young and populous star clusters have shown that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) can be conveniently described by a two-part power-law with an exponent alpha_2 = 2.3 for stars more massive than…
The stellar initial-mass function (IMF) represents a fundamental quantity in astrophysics and cosmology, describing the mass distribution of stars from low to very-high masses. It is intimately linked to a wide variety of topics, including…
Theoretical arguments and indirect observational evidence suggest that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) may evolve with time, such that it is more weighted toward high mass stars at higher redshift. Here we test this idea by…