Galactic‐Field Initial Mass Functions of Massive Stars
Top Cited Papers
- 1 December 2003
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Astronomical Society in The Astrophysical Journal
- Vol. 598 (2) , 1076-1078
- https://doi.org/10.1086/379105
Abstract
Over the past years observations of young and populous star clusters have shown that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) appears to be an invariant featureless Salpeter power law with an exponent α = 2.35 for stars more massive than a few M☉. A consensus has also emerged that most, if not all, stars form in stellar groups and star clusters and that the mass function of young star clusters in the solar neighborhood and in interacting galaxies can be described, over the mass range of a few 10 to 107 M☉, as a power law with an exponent β ≈ 2. These two results imply that galactic-field IMFs for early-type stars cannot, under any circumstances, be a Salpeter power law, but that they must have a steeper exponent, αfield 2.8. This has important consequences for the distribution of stellar remnants and for the chemodynamical and photometric evolution of galaxies.Keywords
All Related Versions
This publication has 21 references indexed in Scilit:
- Cluster Mass Functions in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds: Fading and Size-of-Sample EffectsThe Astronomical Journal, 2003
- Embedded Clusters in Molecular CloudsAnnual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2003
- Galactic Stellar and Substellar Initial Mass FunctionPublications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2003
- The Luminosity Function of Star Clusters in Spiral GalaxiesThe Astronomical Journal, 2002
- A UBVR CCD Survey of the Magellanic CloudsThe Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 2002
- The Initial Mass Function of Stars: Evidence for Uniformity in Variable SystemsScience, 2002
- On the variation of the initial mass functionMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2001
- Star Formation in R136: A Cluster of O3 Stars Revealed byHubble Space TelescopeSpectroscopyThe Astrophysical Journal, 1998
- The distribution of low-mass stars in the Galactic discMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1993
- The implications of runaway OB stars for high-mass star formationMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1992