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Related papers: The Stellar Initial Mass Function

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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…

Astrophysics · Physics 2015-11-11 Guido De Marchi , Francesco Paresce , Simon Portegies Zwart

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…

We present observational evidence of the correlation between the high-mass slope of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) in young star clusters and their stellar surface density, $\sigma_{*}$. When the high-mass end of the IMF is…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-11-03 Sami Dib

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a fundamental astrophysical quantity that impacts a wide range of astrophysical problems from heavy element distribution to galactic evolution to planetary system formation. However, the origin and…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2017-01-11 S. S. R. Offner

We investigate whether the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is universal, or whether it varies significantly among young stellar clusters in the Milky Way. We propose a method to uncover the range of variation of the parameters that…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-10-30 Sami Dib , Stefan Schmeja , Sacha Hony

We introduce a new multi-power-law distribution for the Initial Mass Function (IMF) to explore its potential properties. It follows on prior work that introduced mechanisms accounting for mass accretion in star formation, developed within…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2020-04-22 Christopher Essex , Shantanu Basu , Janett Prehl , Karl Heinz Hoffmann

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 usually assumed that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) takes a universal form and that there exists a direct mapping between this and the distribution of natal core masses (the core mass function, CMF). The IMF and CMF have been…

The observed distribution of IMF shapes can be understood as statistical sampling from a universal IMF and variations that result from stellar-dynamical processes. However, young star clusters appear to have an IMF biased towards low-mass…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Pavel Kroupa

The stellar mass distribution in star-forming regions, stellar clusters and associations, the Initial Mass Function (IMF), appears to be invariant across different star-forming environments, and is consistent with the IMF observed in the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-12-03 Sunder S. K. Singh-Bal , George A. Blaylock-Squibbs , Richard J. Parker , Simon P. Goodwin

The initial mass function (IMF) describes the distribution of stellar masses in a population of newly born stars and is amongst the most fundamental concepts in astrophysics. It is not only the direct result of the star formation process…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2026-02-12 Amery Gration , Robert G. Izzard , Payel Das

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 dichotomy between a universal mass function (IMF) and a variable IMF which depends on local physical parameters characterises observational and theoretical stellar astronomy. In this contribution the available distributions of…

Astrophysics · Physics 2011-09-20 Lorenzo Zaninetti

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…

Accurate specification of a likelihood function is becoming increasingly difficult in many inference problems in astronomy. As sample sizes resulting from astronomical surveys continue to grow, deficiencies in the likelihood function lead…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2019-04-26 Jessi Cisewski-Kehe , Grant Weller , Chad Schafer

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) describes the mass distribution of stars at the time of their formation and is of fundamental importance for many areas of astrophysics. The IMF is reasonably well constrained in the disk of the Milky…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-20 Pieter van Dokkum , Charlie Conroy

Because direct measurements require resolved stellar populations including low-mass stars, determining the stellar initial mass function (IMF) has been a historically difficult problem even within our own Galaxy and impossible everywhere…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-03-26 Charles L. Steinhardt , Carter Meyerhoff , Alexander J. Luening

We review recent determinations of the present day and initial mass functions in various components of the Galaxy, disk, spheroid, young and globular clusters. As a general feature, the IMF is well described by a power-law form for $m\ga 1…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-11-26 Gilles Chabrier

We calculate the integrated galactic initial stellar mass function (IGIMF) in the presence of IMF variations in clusters. IMF Variations for a population of clusters are taken into account in the form of Gaussian distributions of the IMF…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-10-19 Sami Dib

The spectral absorption lines in early-type galaxies contain a wealth of information regarding the detailed abundance pattern, star formation history, and stellar initial mass function (IMF) of the underlying stellar population. Using our…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-05 Charlie Conroy , Pieter van Dokkum