2009/04/29 by Simon P. Goodwin, Simon P Goodwin, M. B. N. Kouwenhoven +1 · 17 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Function (biology) #Initial mass function #Log-normal distribution #Mass distribution #Star (game theory) #Star formation #Stellar evolution #Stellar mass #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1745-3933.2009.00679.x
published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters 397(1), L36-L40 (Oxford University Press) · 6 pages, 4 figures. MNRAS, in press
arxiv created 2009/04/29 · openalex publication_date 2009/06/03 · arxiv updated 2015/05/13 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract We show that the same initial mass function (IMF) can result from very different modes of star formation from very similar underlying core and/or system mass functions. In particular, we show that the canonical IMF can be recovered from very similar system mass functions, but with very different mass ratio distributions within those systems. This is a consequence of the basically lognormal shapes of all of the distributions. We also show that the relationships between the shapes of the core, system and stellar mass functions may not be trivial. Therefore, different star formation in different regions could still result in the same IMF.