Related papers: The Stellar "Snake" -- II: The Mass Function
The characteristic mass M_c and slope Gamma of the IMF are reviewed for clusters, field regions, galaxies, and regions formed during cosmological times. Local star formation has a somewhat uniform M_c and Gamma. Statistical variations in…
The essential features of the stellar Initial Mass Function are, rather generally, (1) a peak at a mass of a few tenths of a solar mass, and (2) a power-law tail toward higher masses that is similar to the original Salpeter function. Recent…
We use N-body simulations to model the 12 Gyr evolution of a suite of star clusters with identical initial stellar mass functions over a range of initial cluster masses, sizes, and orbits. Our models reproduce the distribution of…
We present a simple statistical analysis of recent numerical simulations exploring the correlation between the core mass function obtained from the fragmentation of a molecular cloud and the stellar mass function which forms from these…
There has been a long-standing factor-of-two tension between the observed star formation rate density and the observed stellar mass buildup after $z\sim2$. Recently we have proposed that sophisticated panchromatic SED models can resolve…
A complete accounting of nearby objects -- from the highest-mass white dwarf progenitors down to low-mass brown dwarfs -- is now possible, thanks to an almost complete set of trigonometric parallax determinations from Gaia, ground-based…
A number of recent observational studies of Galactic globular clusters have measured the variation in the slope of a cluster's stellar mass function $\alpha$ with clustercentric distance $r$. In order to gather a deeper understanding of the…
We study the connection between the observed star formation rate-stellar mass (SFR-$M_*$) relation and the evolution of the stellar mass function (SMF) by means of a subhalo abundance matching technique coupled to merger trees extracted…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) in star clusters is reviewed. Uncertainties in the observations are emphasized. We suggest there is a distinct possibility that cluster IMFs vary systematically with density or pressure. Dense…
Several recent studies have shown that the star cluster initial mass function (CIMF) can be well approximated by a power law, with indications for a steepening or truncation at high masses. This contribution considers the evolution of such…
[Abridged] We present the evolution of the stellar mass function (SMF) of galaxies from z=4.0 to z=1.3 measured from a sample constructed from the deep NIR MUSYC, the FIRES, and the GOODS-CDFS surveys, all having very high-quality optical…
Several recent observational studies have concluded that the initial mass function (IMF) of stars varies systematically with galaxy properties such as velocity dispersion. In this paper, we investigate the effect of linking the circular…
We summarize recent observational and theoretical progress aimed at understanding the origin of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) with specific focus on galactic star-forming regions. We synthesize data from various efforts to…
We measure how the slope $\alpha$ of the stellar mass function (MF) changes as a function of clustercentric distance $r$ in five Galactic globular clusters and compare $\alpha(r)$ to predictions from direct $N$-body star cluster…
Observed variations in the slope of the initial stellar mass function are shown to be consistent with a model in which the protostellar gas is randomly sampled from hierarchical clouds at a rate proportional to the square root of the local…
The stellar mass function is one of the fundamental distributions of stellar astrophysics. Its form at masses similar to the Sun was found by Salpeter (1955) to be a power-law $m^{-\alpha}$ with a slope of $\alpha=1.35$. Since then the mass…
The Gaia mission has provided precise astrometry and spectrophotometry for billions of stars in the Milky Way, enabling the identification and kinematic characterization of stellar streams. These streams, remnants of disrupted globular…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a fundamental property of star formation, offering key insight into the physics driving the process as well as informing our understanding of stellar populations, their by-products, and their…
Observations indicate that the central portions of the Present-Day Prestellar Core Mass Function (CMF) and the Stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) both have approximately log-normal shapes, but that the CMF is displaced to higher mass than…
We present the first determination of the Galactic stellar mass function (MF) for low-mass stars (0.2-0.5 M_sun) at metallicities [Fe/H] < -1. A sample of ~53,000 stars was selected as metal-poor on the basis of both their halo-like orbits…