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Related papers: The Physical Origin of the Stellar Initial Mass Fu…

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The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is central to our interpretation of astronomical observables and to our understanding of most baryonic processes within galaxies. The universality of the IMF, suggested by observations in our own…

Recent evidence based independently on spectral line strengths and dynamical modelling point towards a non-universal stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF), probably implying an excess of low-mass stars in elliptical galaxies with a high…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-16 Carsten Weidner , Ignacio Ferreras , Alexandre Vazdekis , Francesco La Barbera

In the solar neighborhood, the Initial Mass Function (IMF) follows is canonically described by the Salpeter power-law slope for the high-mass range. The stellar IMF may directly result from a Core Mass Function (CMF) through accretion,…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-05-06 B. Thomasson , I. Joncour , E. Moraux , F. Motte , T. Yoo , A. Ginsburg

We investigated a volume-limited sample of LAMOST main-sequence stars with masses from 0.25 to 1 $M_{\odot}$ and distances of 150-350 pc to explore how the stellar initial mass function (IMF) varies with metallicity. We corrected the…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2025-11-07 Dan Qiu , Chao Liu , Jennifer A. Johnson , Jiadong Li , Bo Zhang

We review current understanding of star formation, outlining an overall theoretical framework and the observations that motivate it. A conception of star formation has emerged in which turbulence plays a dual role, both creating…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-11-26 Christopher F. McKee , Eve C. Ostriker

As star-forming clouds collapse, the gas within them fragments to ever-smaller masses. Naively one might expect this process to continue down to the smallest mass that is able to radiate away its binding energy on a dynamical timescale, the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-07-27 Mark R. Krumholz , Andrew T. Myers , Richard I. Klein , Christopher F. McKee

We investigate whether the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is universal, or whether it varies significantly among young stellar clusters in the Milky Way. We propose a method to uncover the range of variation of the parameters that…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-10-30 Sami Dib , Stefan Schmeja , Sacha Hony

The study of young stellar populations has revealed that most stars are in binary or higher order multiple systems. In this study the influence on the stellar initial mass function (IMF) of large quantities of unresolved multiple massive…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 C. Weidner , P. Kroupa , T. Maschberger

The manner in which the stellar initial mass function (IMF) scales with global galaxy properties is under debate. We use two hydrodynamical, cosmological simulations to predict possible trends for two self-consistent variable IMF…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-10-22 Christopher Barber , Joop Schaye , Robert A. Crain

We explore the stellar initial mass function (IMF) of a sample of 49 massive quiescent galaxies (MQGs) at 0.9$<$z$<$1.5. We base our analysis on intermediate resolution spectro-photometric data in the GOODS-N field taken in the…

We perform a series of three-dimensional, magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) simulations of star cluster formation including gravity, turbulence, magnetic fields, stellar radiative heating and outflow feedback. We observe that the inclusion of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-08-25 Sajay Sunny Mathew , Christoph Federrath

We introduce a new multi-power-law distribution for the Initial Mass Function (IMF) to explore its potential properties. It follows on prior work that introduced mechanisms accounting for mass accretion in star formation, developed within…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2020-04-22 Christopher Essex , Shantanu Basu , Janett Prehl , Karl Heinz Hoffmann

A universal stellar initial mass function (IMF) should not be expected from theoretical models of star formation, but little conclusive observational evidence for a variable IMF has been uncovered. In this paper, a parameterization of the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-06-01 Albert Sneppen , Charles L. Steinhardt , Hagan Hensley , Adam S. Jermyn , Basel Mostafa , John R. Weaver

We investigate the time evolution and spatial variation of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) in star-forming disk galaxies by using chemodynamical simulations with an IMF model depending both on local densities and metallicities…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-12 Kenji Bekki , Gerhardt R. Meurer

Context: The shape of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) of a star cluster near its upper mass limit is a focal topic of investigation as it determines the high mass stellar content and hence the dynamics of the cluster at its embedded…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-11 Sambaran Banerjee , Pavel Kroupa

Observations with JWST have revealed an unexpected high abundance of bright z>10 galaxy candidates. We explore whether a stellar initial mass function (IMF) that becomes increasingly top-heavy towards higher redshifts and lower gas-phase…

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…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-20 Gilles Chabrier , Patrick Hennebelle

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…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Aake Nordlund , Paolo Padoan

The stellar initial mass function (sIMF) is often treated as a stochastic probability distribution, yet such an interpretation implies Poisson noise that is inconsistent with growing observational evidence. In particular, the observed…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-02-02 Eda Gjergo , Zhiyu Zhang , Pavel Kroupa

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) seems to be variable and not universal, as argued in the literature in the last three decades. Several relations among the low-mass end of the IMF slope and other stellar population, photometric or…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-01-13 C. E. Barbosa , C. Spiniello , M. Arnaboldi , L. Coccato , M. Hilker , T. Richtler