Evidence for a fundamental stellar upper mass limit from clustered star formation

By C. Weidner, Pavel Kroupa. 2003

194 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The observed masses of the most massive stars do not surpass about 150 M ○. . This may either be a fundamental upper mass limit which is defined by the physics of massive stars and/or their formation, or it may simply reflect the increasing sparsity of such very massive stars, so that the observation of even higher mass stars becomes unlikely in the Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds. It is shown here that if the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a power law with a Salpeter exponent (a = 2. 35) for massive stars then the richest very young cluster R136 seen in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) should contain stars with masses larger than 750 M ○. . If, however, the IMF is formulated by consistently incorporating a fundamental upper mass limit then the observed upper mass limit is arrived at readily even if the IMF is invariant. An explicit down-turn or cut-off of the IMF near 150 M ○. is not required: our formulation of the problem contains this implicitly. We are therefore led to conclude that a fundamental maximum stellar mass near 150 M ○. exists, unless the true IMF has a > 2.8.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6048a6bab4d545a09e9d5659500352baf0dfc0b3

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

The big problems in star formation: The star formation rate, stellar clustering, and the initial mass function (2014, background): “There may also be an upper cutoff somewhere between 100 and 150 M (Elmegreen 2000; Weidner & Kroupa 2004; Figer 2005), although this possibility has been challenged by recent observations of stars that appear to exceed the proposed limit (Crowther et al. 2010; Doran et al. 2013).”
The Variation of Integrated Star Initial Mass Functions among Galaxies (2005, background): “Weidner & Kroupa (2004) interpret mmax to be a fundamental upper stellar mass. Intriguingly, the same stellar mass limit is noted by Figer (2005) for the metal-rich MW nuclear cluster Arches suggesting that perhaps mmax 150 M may be quite independent of metallicity, and Oey & Clarke (2005) find…”
LIMITING ACCRETION ONTO MASSIVE STARS BY FRAGMENTATION-INDUCED STARVATION (2010, background): “…that are massive enough so that purely random sampling of the initial mass function (IMF) (Kroupa 2002; Chabrier 2003) without upper mass limit should have yielded stars above 150 M (Weidner & Kroupa 2004; Figer 2005; Oey & Clarke 2005; Weidner et al. 2010, see however, Selman & Melnick 2008).”
The relation between the most-massive star and its parental star cluster mass (2009, methodology): “2 and 3, and using the canonical multi-part power-law IMF (Appendix A) Weidner & Kroupa (2004) found the relation visible as a thick-solid line in Fig.”
Runaway collisions in young star clusters - II. Numerical results (2005, methodology): “…actually an effective IMF for stars forming the Galactic field, with clusters probably having a Salpeter-like IMF beyond 1M⊙ (Kroupa & Weidner 2003; Weidner & Kroupa 2004), c© 2005 RAS, MNRAS 000, 1–21 we used it in order to investigate the possible effects of a smaller fraction of massive stars.”
The evolution of runaway stellar collision products (2009, background): “The usual mode of star formation leads to a spectrum of masses between the theoretical hydrogen-burning limit and some upper limit, which appears to be close to about 100 M (Elmegreen 1999; Weidner & Kroupa 2004; Figer 2005).”
Evidence for a Nonuniversal Stellar Initial Mass Function from the Integrated Properties of SDSS Galaxies (2007, background): “Weidner & Kroupa (2004) argue that given the large mass and youth of the star-forming cluster R136 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, stars in excess of 750M should be present given a Salpeter IMFwith no upper mass limit to stars, whereas no stars above 150 M are observed.”
The maximum stellar mass, star-cluster formation and composite stellar populations (2005, methodology): “Here m low = 0.01 M is the minimal fragmentation mass and mmax∗ ≈ 150 M is the measured maximal stellar mass limit (Weidner & Kroupa 2004; Figer 2005; Oey & Clarke 2005).”
Wind modelling of very massive stars up to 300 solar masses (2011, background): “On purely statistical grounds, some investigators have claimed there is a universal upper limit of ∼ 150 M ⊙ (e.g. 2005) Weidner & Kroupa 2004, Oey & Clarke 2005, Figer .”
Young Massive Star Clusters (2010, background): “The maximum massmmax rarely poses a practical problem, although there may be some interesting correlations between the total cluster mass and the mass of the most massive star (Weidner & Kroupa 2004) • Mass Segregation.”
Stellar Chemical Signatures and Hierarchical Galaxy Formation (2004, background): “The young starforming complex R136 in the LMC is also an interesting example; Weidner & Kroupa (2004) point out that a standard Salpeter IMF predicts that R136 should contain a star with M 750 M (or at least 10–40 stars 150 M , the maximum mass observed).”
From star clusters to dwarf galaxies: the properties of dynamically hot stellar systems (2008, background): “Note that the upper mass limit of the IMF as suggested by Weidner & Kroupa (2004), Oey & Clarke (2005) and Figer (2005) is higher than 100 M⊙, but this does not have a mentionable affect on the expected M/L ratios of the SSPs discussed here due to the scarcity of high-mass stars in them.”
Stellar-mass black holes in young massive and open stellar clusters and their role in gravitational-wave generation (2016, methodology): “The initial mass function (IMF) of all the models are taken to be the canonical one, satisfying the observed maximum stellar mass-cluster mass relation (Wei- dner & Kroupa 2004; Kroupa et al. 2013).”
ON THE MAXIMUM MASS OF STELLAR BLACK HOLES (2009, methodology): “We also note that Hurley et al. (2000) fitted their stellar evolution formulae to detailed models of stellar masses of 100M⊙ or less and we extend this to include stars up to 150M⊙ – the predicted maximum stellar mass for star formation under usual conditions (Weidner & Kroupa 2004).”
The stellar and sub-stellar IMF of simple and composite populations (2011, methodology): “Based on the observations by Selman et al. (1999), Weidner & Kroupa (2004) assumed that R136 has a mass in the range 5×104 ≤ MR136/M⊙ ≤ 2.5× 105.”
Toward Understanding Massive Star Formation (2007, background): “Weidner & Kroupa (2004) and Figer (2005) discussed the upper limit to the masses of stars, based on observations of the R136 cluster in the LMC and the Arches cluster near the Galactic Center, respectively.”
EVOLUTION OF MASSIVE PROTOSTARS WITH HIGH ACCRETION RATES (2008, background): “This is a somewhat higher value than the likely upper mass cut-off of the Galactic initial mass function ∼ 150 M⊙ (e.g., Weidner & Kroupa 2004; Figer 2005).”