2003/08/20 by Pavel Kroupa, C. Weidner, Carsten Weidner · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Exponent #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Initial mass function #Physics #Power law #Star cluster #Star formation #Stars #Stellar evolution #Stellar mass #Stellar mass loss #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/379105
published as Astrophys.J.598:1076-1078,2003 · ApJ, accepted, 6 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2003/08/20 · openalex publication_date 2003/12/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
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 10 7 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, α field ≳ 2.8. This has important consequences for the distribution of stellar remnants and for the chemodynamical and photometric evolution of galaxies.