Related papers: Universal Upper End of the Stellar Initial Mass Fu…
Massive stars rapidly change their masses through strong stellar winds and mass transfer in binary systems. We show that such mass changes leave characteristic signatures in stellar mass functions of young star clusters which can be used to…
We demonstrate the feasibility of detecting directly low mass stars in unresolved super-star clusters with ages < 10 Myr using near-infrared spectroscopy at modest resolution (R ~ 1000). Such measurements could constrain the ratio of high…
Globular clusters are often assumed to be good tracers of major star formation episodes in their host galaxies. While observations over the past 2 decades have confirmed the presence of young objects with globular cluster-like properties in…
Residual-gas expulsion after cluster formation has recently been shown to leave an imprint in the low-mass present-day stellar mass function (PDMF) which allowed the estimation of birth conditions of some Galactic globular clusters (GCs)…
A growing fraction of Simple Stellar Population (SSP) models, in an aim to create more realistic simulations capable of including stochastic variation in their outputs, begin their simulations with a distribution of discrete stars following…
This paper revisits the classical Kennicutt method for inferring the stellar initial mass function (IMF) from the integrated light properties of galaxies. The large size, uniform high quality data set from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR4…
Much of our knowledge of galaxies comes from analysing the radiation emitted by their stars. It depends on the stellar initial mass function (IMF) describing the distribution of stellar masses when the population formed. Consequently…
Recent work has suggested that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is not universal, but rather is correlated with galaxy stellar mass, stellar velocity dispersion, or morphological type. In this paper, we investigate variations of the…
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 investigate how a single generation galactic mass function (SGMF) depends on the existence of variations in the initial stellar mass functions (IMF) of stellar clusters. We show that cluster-to-cluster variations of the IMF lead to a…
The discovery around the turn of the millenium of a population of very massive (M$_\star$ > 2$\times$10$^6$ M$_\odot$) compact stellar systems (CSS) with physical properties (radius, velocity dispersion, stellar mass etc.) that are…
The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way plays host to a massive, young cluster that may have formed in one of the most inhospitable environments in the Galaxy. We present new measurements of the global properties of this…
We present a new approach in the study of the Initial Mass function (IMF) in external galaxies based on quasar microlensing observations. We use measurements of quasar microlensing magnifications in 24 lensed quasars to estimate the average…
Recent results indicate the stellar initial mass function is not a strong function of star-forming environment or ``initial conditions'' (e.g. Meyer et al. 2000). Some studies suggest that a universal IMF may extend to sub-stellar masses…
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has been instrumental in the discovery of large numbers of extragalactic young massive star clusters (YMCs), often assumed to be proto-globular clusters (GCs). As a consequence, the field of YMC formation…
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…
We examine whether existing data in clusters, both old and young, and in the field of the Galactic disk and halo is consistent with a universal slope for the initial mass function (IMF). The most reasonable statement that can be made at the…
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…
Young massive clusters (YMCs) are the most massive star clusters forming in nearby galaxies and are thought to be a young analogue to the globular clusters. Understanding the formation process of YMCs leads to looking into very efficient…
Using deep HST/ACS observations, we demonstrate that the sub-solar stellar initial mass function (IMF) of 6 ultra-faint dwarf Milky Way Satellites (UFDs) is more bottom light than the IMF of the Milky Way disk. Our data have a lower mass…