Related papers: Cluster Density and the IMF
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) describes the distribution in stellar masses produced from a burst of star formation. For more than fifty years, the implicit assumption underpinning most areas of research involving the IMF has been…
We present results from the largest numerical simulation of star formation to resolve the fragmentation process down to the opacity limit. The simulation follows the collapse and fragmentation of a large-scale turbulent molecular cloud to…
The observed masses of the most massive stars do not surpass about 150Msun. This may either be a fundamental upper mass limit which is defined by the physics of massive stars and/or their formation, or it may simply reflect the increasing…
At the earliest evolutionary stages, massive star-forming regions are deeply embedded within their natal cores and not observable at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. Interferometric high-spatial resolution mm dust continuum…
Recent observational evidence for initial mass function (IMF) variations in massive quiescent galaxies at $z = 0$ challenges the long-established paradigm of a universal IMF. While a few theoretical models relate the IMF to birth cloud…
Recent results suggest that the initial mass function (IMF) of globular clusters (GCs) is metallicity and density dependent. Here it is studied how this variation affects the initial masses and the numbers of core collapse supernovae…
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…
The stellar IMF has been found to be an invariant Salpeter power-law (alpha=2.35) above about 1 Msun, but at the same time a massive star typically has more than one companion. This constrains the possible formation scenarios of massive…
Much of our knowledge of galaxies comes from analysing the radiation emitted by their stars. It depends on the stellar initial mass function (IMF) describing the distribution of stellar masses when the population formed. Consequently…
Over the past years observations of young and populous star clusters have shown that the stellar IMF appears to be an invariant featureless Salpeter power-law with an exponent alpha=2.35 for stars more massive than a few Msun. A consensus…
In this work, we derive the stellar initial mass function (IMF) from the superposition of mass distributions of dense cores, generated through gravoturbulent fragmentation of unstable clumps in molecular clouds (MCs) and growing through…
(abridged) The stellar initial mass function (IMF) can be conveniently represented as a canonical two-part power law function and is largely invariant for star formation regions evident in the Local Group of galaxies. The IMF is a…
We present a large suite of simulations of the formation of low-mass star clusters. Our simulations include an extensive set of physical processes -- magnetohydrodynamics, radiative transfer, and protostellar outflows -- and span a wide…
Turbulent fragmentation determines where and when protostellar cores form, and how they contract and grow in mass from the surrounding cloud material. This process is investigated, using numerical models of self-gravitating molecular cloud…
Stars do not form continuously distributed over star forming galaxies. They form in star clusters of different masses. This nature of clustered star formation is taken into account in the theory of the integrated galactic stellar initial…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a key property of stellar populations. There is growing evidence that the classical star-formation mechanism by the direct cloud fragmentation process has difficulties reproducing the observed…
We show that one can obtain a good fit to the measured main sequence mass function (MF) of a large sample of Galactic clusters (young and old) with a tapered Salpeter power law distribution function with an exponential truncation. The…
Recent observations have detected top-heavy IMFs in dense star forming regions like the Arches cluster. Whether such IMFs also exist in old dense stellar systems like globular clusters is difficult to constrain, because massive stars…
The stellar initial mas function (IMF) has been described as being invariant, bottom heavy or top-heavy in extremely dense star burst conditions. To provide usable observable diagnostic we calculate redshift dependent spectral energy…
(abridged) Here we discuss the question whether the extreme circumstances in the centre of the Milky Way may be the reason for a significant variation of the IMF. By means of stellar evolution models using different codes we show that the…