Related papers: The maximum stellar mass, star-cluster formation a…
When estimating the abundances which result from a given star formation event, it is customary to treat the IMF as a series of weight factors to be applied to the stellar yields, as a function of mass, implicitly assuming one is dealing…
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 stellar initial mass function (IMF) determines the relative number of stars born at a given mass. Despite the tremendous effort to establish a universal IMF, the astronomical literature offers a wealth of diverse evidence for IMF…
Obtaining accurate measurements of the initial mass function (IMF) is often considered to be the key to understanding star formation, and a universal IMF is often assumed to imply a universal star formation process. Here, we illustrate that…
Massive stars (with mass m_* > 8 solar masses) are fundamental to the evolution of galaxies, because they produce heavy elements, inject energy into the interstellar medium, and possibly regulate the star formation rate. The individual star…
Recent surveys of star forming regions have shown that most stars, and probably all massive stars, are born in dense stellar clusters. The mechanism by which a molecular cloud fragments to form several hundred to thousands of individual…
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…
We show that the same initial mass function (IMF) can result from very different modes of star formation from very similar underlying core and/or system mass functions. In particular, we show that the canonical IMF can be recovered from…
The study of young stellar populations has revealed that most stars are in binary or higher order multiple systems. In this study the influence on the stellar initial mass function (IMF) of large quantities of unresolved multiple massive…
Observed variations in the IMF are reviewed with an emphasis on environmental density. The remote field IMF studied in the LMC by several authors is clearly steeper than most cluster IMFs, which have slopes close to the Salpeter value.…
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…
Stars in globular clusters (GCs) exhibit a peculiar chemical pattern with strong abundance variations in light elements along with a constant abundance in heavy elements. These abundance anomalies can be explained by a primordial pollution…
In the solar neighborhood, the Initial Mass Function (IMF) follows is canonically described by the Salpeter power-law slope for the high-mass range. The stellar IMF may directly result from a Core Mass Function (CMF) through accretion,…
Observations and high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations indicate that massive star clusters form through a complex hierarchical assembly. We use simulations including post-Newtonian dynamics (the BIFROST code) and stellar evolution (the…
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…
In this contribution we review our recent numerical work discussing the essential role of the local cluster environment in assembling massive stars. First we show that massive stars are formed from low mass pre-stellar cores and become…
Most structural and evolutionary properties of galaxies strongly rely on the stellar initial mass function (IMF), namely the distribution of the stellar mass formed in each episode of star formation. As the IMF shapes the stellar population…
In the framework of Milgromian dynamics (MOND), galaxy clusters are known to exhibit a residual missing mass problem, with the baryonic mass falling short of the dynamical mass by about a factor of two. The baryon content of clusters is…
We summarize recent observational and theoretical progress aimed at understanding the origin of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) with specific focus on galactic star-forming regions. We synthesize data from various efforts to…
It is possible to extract, from the observations, distribution functions of the birth dynamical properties of a stellar population, and to also infer that these are quite invariant to the physical conditions of star formation. The most…