Related papers: Cosmic Threads: Interlinking the Stellar Initial M…
The cold interstellar medium (ISM) plays a central role in the galaxy evolution process. It is the reservoir that fuels galaxy growth via star formation, the repository of material formed by these stars, and a sensitive tracer of internal…
The cycling of material from the interstellar medium (ISM) into stars and the return of stellar ejecta into the ISM is the engine that drives the "galactic ecology" in normal spirals, a cornerstone in the formation and evolution of galaxies…
The distribution of stars and stellar remnants (white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes) within globular clusters holds clues about their formation and long-term evolution, with important implications for their initial mass function (IMF)…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is predicted to depend upon the temperature of gas in star-forming molecular clouds. The introduction of an additional parameter, $T_{IMF}$ , into photometric template fitting, suggest most galaxies…
Does the IMF vary? Is it significantly different in metal-rich environments than in metal-poor ones? Theoretical work predicts this to be the case. But in order to provide robust empirical evidence for this, the researcher must understand…
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…
(abridged) The case can be made for a rather universal stellar IMF form that can be approximated by a two-part power-law function in the stellar regime. However, there exists a possible hint for a systematic variation with metallicity. A…
The observed present-day stellar mass function (PDMF) of the solar neighborhood is a mixture of stellar populations born in star-forming events that occurred over the life-time of the thin disk of the Galaxy. Assuming stars form in embedded…
The current knowledge on the stellar IMF is documented. It appears to become top-heavy when the star-formation rate density surpasses about 0.1Msun/(yr pc^3) on a pc scale and it may become increasingly bottom-heavy with increasing…
In this paper we investigate whether the stellar initial mass function of early-type galaxies depends on their host environment. To this purpose, we have selected a sample of early-type galaxies from the SPIDER catalogue, characterized…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a key parameter to study galaxy evolution. Here we measure the IMF mass normalization for a sample of 68 field galaxies in the redshift range 0.7 to 0.9 within the Extended Groth Strip. To do this…
The topic of the stellar "original mass function" has a nearly 50 year history,dating to the publication in 1955 of Salpeter's seminal paper. In this review I discuss the many more recent results that have emerged on the initial mass…
The interplay between the ISM and the massive stars formed in clusters and, more generally, in recent events of star formation is reviewed via the global effects each has on the other. The pre-existing environment affects the properties of…
The high-mass slope of the stellar initial mass function (IMF), first measured by E. Salpeter in 1955, appears universal across star-forming environments. Its origin remains a central unsolved problem in astrophysics. Using $getsf$, we…
Observations of star-forming galaxies at high-z have suggested discrepancies in the inferred star formation rates (SFRs) either between data and models, or between complementary measures of the SFR. These putative discrepancies could all be…
In this contributed talk I present recent results on the connection between stellar population properties and the normalisation of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) measured using stellar dynamics, based on a large sample of 260…
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)…
We use recent microlensing observations toward the central bulge of the Galaxy to probe the overall stellar plus brown dwarf initial mass function (IMF) in these regions well within the brown dwarf domain. We find that the IMF is consistent…
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…
The combination of the high-resolution ALMA, JWST and HST observations provides unprecedented insights into the connection between individual molecular clouds and their internal stellar populations in nearby galaxies. The molecular clouds…