Related papers: The IMF in Starbursts
If star formation depends strongly on the global properties of the environment in which they form, the slope of the IMF as well as the upper and lower mass cut-offs would be expected to vary significantly between violent starbursts and more…
The turnover in the stellar initial mass function (IMF) at low mass suggests the presence of two independent mass functions that combine in different ways above and below a characteristic mass given by the thermal Jeans mass in the cloud.…
Resolution of nearby giant HII regions into their stellar and nebular constituents provides fundamental insights for interpreting more distant and powerful starburst activity. The following summarizes recent advances in our understanding of…
The theory for the formation of the first population of stars (Pop III) predicts an initial mass function (IMF) dominated by high-mass stars, in contrast to the present-day IMF, which tends to yield mostly stars with masses less than 1…
We review recent high spatial resolution millimeter continuum and spectral line observations of (proto-)cluster regions. These observations reveal that the mass distribution of prestellar cores is consistent with the initial mass function…
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…
Stars form in clustered environments, but how they form when the available resources are shared is still not well understood. A related question is whether the IMF is in fact universal across galactic environments, a galactic initial mass…
The measured star-formation rates (SFRs) of galaxies comprise an important constraint on galaxy evolution and also on their cosmological boundary conditions. Any available tracer of the SFR depends on the shape of the mass-distribution of…
The integrated galaxial initial mass function (IGIMF) is the relevant distribution function containing the information on the distribution of stellar remnants, the number of supernovae and the chemical enrichment history of a galaxy. Since…
The mass of unresolved young star clusters derived from spectro-photometric data may well be off by a factor of 2 or more once the migration of massive stars driven by mass segregation is accounted for. We quantify this effect for a large…
The observed brightness of the Tully-Fisher relation suggests a low stellar M/L ratio and a "bottom-light" IMF in disc galaxies, but the corresponding efficiency of chemical enrichment tends to exceed the observational estimates. Either…
In the star formation process, the vital impact of environmental factors such as feedback from massive stars and stellar density on the form of the initial mass function (IMF) at low-mass end is yet to be understood. Hence a systematic,…
Wolf-Rayet stars are the evolved descendents of massive stars. Their extraordinary properties make them useful tracers of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) in a young stellar population. I discuss how the interpretation of spectral…
The dwarf spheroidal galaxy in Ursa Minor is apparently dark-matter dominated, and is of very low surface brightness, with total luminosity only equal to that of a globular cluster. Indeed its dominant stellar population is old and…
The stellar initial mass function is of great significance for the study of star formation and galactic structure. Observations indicate that the IMF follows a power-law form. This work derived that when the expected number of stars formed…
We undertake a systematic analysis of the early (< 0.5 Myr) evolution of clustering and the stellar initial mass function in turbulent fragmentation simulations. These large scale simulations for the first time offer the opportunity for a…
Studies of the broad emission-line regions (BLRs) in quasars have revealed solar or higher enrichment levels up to the highest redshifts. In combination with the presence of large amounts of dust in QSOs at $z$ about 6, this implies that…
We investigate how a single generation galactic mass function (SGMF) depends on the existence of variations in the initial stellar mass functions (IMF) of stellar clusters. We show that cluster-to-cluster variations of the IMF lead to a…
Stars formed in galaxy cluster potential wells must be responsible for the high level of enrichment measured in the intracluster medium (ICM); however, there is increasing tension between this truism and the parsimonious assumption that the…
The suggestion that roughly half the mass of the galactic halo might be in the form of white dwarfs, together with the limits on the infrared background light and on the initial metallicity of the galactic disk, would set strong constraints…