The Salpeter Slope of the IMF Explained
Abstract
If we accept a paradigm that star formation is a self-similar, hierarchical process, then the Salpeter slope of the IMF for high-mass stars can be simply and elegantly explained as follows. If the instrinsic IMF at the smallest scales follows a simple -2 power-law slope, then the steepening to the -2.35 Salpeter value results when the most massive stars cannot form in the lowest-mass clumps of a cluster. It is stressed that this steepening MUST occur if clusters form hierarchically from clumps, and the lowest-mass clumps can form stars. This model is consistent with a variety of observations as well as theoretical simulations.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1207.2350,
title = {The Salpeter Slope of the IMF Explained},
author = {M. S. Oey},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1207.2350},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
4 pages, 1 figure; to appear in The Labyrinth of Star Formation, (eds.) D. Stamatellos, S. Goodwin, and D. Ward-Thompson, Springer, in press