Related papers: Understanding the IMF
We review recent advances in our understanding of the origin of the initial mass function (IMF). We emphasize the use of numerical simulations to investigate how each physical process involved in star formation affects the resulting IMF. We…
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 its influence on the…
The initial mass function (IMF) of metal-free stars that form in the initial starburst of massive (virial temperatures >10^4K) metal-free protogalaxies is studied. In particular, we focus on the effect of H2 photodissociation by…
This study examines the possibility of starting the process of collapsing and forming stars from a fractional molecular cloud. Although the Verlinde's approach is employed to derive the corresponding gravitational potential, the results are…
(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…
The thermal and chemical evolution of star-forming clouds is studied for different gas metallicities, Z, using the model of Omukai (2000), updated to include deuterium chemistry and the effects of cosmic microwave background (CMB)…
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…
Observations have not yielded convincing results concerning the form of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) or its variations in space and time, so it is proposed that theoretical models may provide useful guidance. Several classes of…
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…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is playing a critical role in the history of our universe. We propose a theory that is based solely on local processes, namely the dust opacity limit, the tidal forces and the properties of the…
The stellar mass spectrum is an important property of the stellar cluster and a fundamental quantity to understand our Universe. The fragmentation of diffuse molecular cloud into stars is subject to physical processes such as gravity,…
If a significant fraction of metals is in dust, star-forming cores with metallicity higher than a critical value ~10^{-6}-10^{-5}Z_sun are able to fragment by dust cooling, thereby producing low-mass cores. Despite being above the critical…
We study star cluster formation in a low-metallicity environment using three dimensional hydrodynamic simulations. Starting from a turbulent cloud core, we follow the formation and growth of protostellar systems with different metallicities…
We examine the cosmic evolution of a stellar initial mass function (IMF) in galaxies that varies with the Jeans mass in the interstellar medium, paying particular attention to the K-band stellar mass to light ratio (M/L_K) of present-epoch…
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…
The fragmentation of star-forming interstellar clouds, and the resulting stellar initial mass function (IMF), is strongly affected by the temperature structure of the collapsing gas. Since radiation feedback from embedded stars can modify…
A popular theory of star formation is gravito-turbulent fragmentation, in which self-gravitating structures are created by turbulence-driven density fluctuations. Simple theories of isothermal fragmentation successfully reproduce the core…
Dust is important for star formation because it is the crucial component that couples gas to stellar radiation fields, allowing radiation feedback to influence gas fragmentation and thus the stellar initial mass function (IMF). Variations…
It is believed that the majority of stars form in clusters. Therefore it is likely that the gas physical conditions that prevail in forming clusters, largely determine the properties of stars that form and in particular the initial mass…
Massive stars are very rare, but their extreme luminosities make them both the only type of young star we can observe in distant galaxies and the dominant energy sources in the universe today. They form rarely because efficient radiative…