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Related papers: The Initial Mass Function of the Most Massive Star…

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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…

Any predictive theory of star formation must explain observed variations (or lack thereof) in the initial mass function. Recent work suggests that we might expect quantitative variations in the IMF as a function of metallicity (Larson 2005)…

Observations of mergers of multi-compact object systems offer insights to the formation processes of massive stars in globular clusters. Simulations of stellar clusters, may be used to understand and interpret observations. Simulations…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-12-27 Indulekha Kavila , Megha Viswambharan

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…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-03 Pavel Kroupa , Carsten Weidner , Jan Pflamm-Altenburg , Ingo Thies , Joerg Dabringhausen , Michael Marks , Thomas Maschberger

The stellar initial mass function (IMF), along with the star formation rate, is one of the fundamental properties that any theory of star formation must explain. An interesting feature of the IMF is that it appears to be remarkably…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2011-06-20 Andrew T. Myers , Mark R. Krumholz , Richard I. Klein , Christopher F. McKee

It is now well-established that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) can be determined from the absorption line spectra of old stellar systems, and this has been used to measure the IMF and its variation across the early-type galaxy…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-03-22 Charlie Conroy , Pieter van Dokkum , Alexa Villaume

A method is presented here for investigating variations in the upper end of the stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) by probing the production rate of ionizing photons in unresolved, compact star clusters with ages<10 Myr and covering a…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2010-10-26 Daniela Calzetti , Rupali Chandar , Janice C. Lee , Bruce G. Elmegreen , Robert C. Kennicutt , Brad C. Whitmore

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 test the hypothesis that the initial mass function (IMF) is determined by the density probability distribution function (PDF) produced by supersonic turbulence. We compare 14 simulations of star cluster formation in 50 solar mass…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-12-07 David Liptai , Daniel J. Price , James Wurster , Matthew R. Bate

In this work, we want to find out if the IMF can be determined from colour images, integrated colours, or mass-to-light ratios, especially at high redshift, where galaxies cannot be resolved into individual stars, which would enable us to…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-11-26 P. Westera , M. Samland , S. J. Kautsch , R. Buser , K. Ammon

The hypothesis of a universal initial mass function (IMF) -- motivated by observations in nearby stellar systems -- has been recently challenged by the discovery of a systematic variation of the IMF with the central velocity dispersion,…

Observations and theories of the stellar initial mass function are reviewed. The universality and large total mass range of the power law portion of the IMF suggest a connection between stellar mass and cloud structure. The fractal patterns…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Bruce G. Elmegreen

Recent results on the non-universality of the Initial Mass Function (IMF) have shown strong evidence of IMF variations with galaxy velocity dispersion, with a corresponding impact on other stellar population parameters, line indices and…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-12 Anna Ferré-Mateu , Alexandre Vazdekis , Ignacio G. de la Rosa

(abridged version) Identifying the processes that determine the initial mass function of stars (IMF) is a fundamental problem in star formation theory. One of the major uncertainties is the exact chemical state of the star forming gas and…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-11-11 R. S. Klessen , A. -K. Jappsen , R. B. Larson , Y. Li , M. -M. Mac Low

In the last decade, growing evidence has emerged supporting a non-universal stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) in massive galaxies, with a larger number of dwarf stars with respect to the Milky-Way (bottom-heavy IMF). However, a consensus…

The emergence of the first, so-called Population III (Pop III), stars shaped early cosmic history in ways that crucially depends on their initial mass function (IMF). However, because of the absence of direct observational constraints, the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-02-09 Alexanders Lazar , Volker Bromm

I review efforts to determine the form and any lower limit to the initial mass function in the Galactic disk, using observations of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs in the field, young clusters and star forming regions. I focus on the…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-05 R. D. Jeffries

A number of recent studies have proposed that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) of early type galaxies varies systematically as a function of galaxy mass, with higher mass galaxies having bottom heavy IMFs. These bottom heavy IMFs…

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

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…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2009-11-13 J. Pflamm-Altenburg , C. Weidner , P. Kroupa