English

IMF slope derived from a pure probabilistic model

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2025-03-20 v1 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

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 from a spherical molecular cloud is much greater than 1, there is a relationship between the slope α\alpha of the IMF and rnr^n in the radius-density relation of spherically symmetric gas clouds, given by α=3/(n+3)\alpha = 3/(n+3) (ΓIMF=n/(n+3)\Gamma_{\mathrm {IMF}} = n/(n+3)). This conclusion is close to the results of numerical simulations and observations, but it is derived from a pure probabilistic model, which may have underlying reasons worth pondering.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2503.14812,
  title  = {IMF slope derived from a pure probabilistic model},
  author = {Yu-Fu Shen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.14812},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T22:26:06.213Z