The Initial Mass Function: From Salpeter 1955 to 2005

By G. Chabrier. 2004

242 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Fifty years after Ed Salpeter's seminal paper, tremendous progress both on the observational and theoretical sides allow a fairly accurate determination of the Galactic IMF not only down to the hydrogen-burning limit but into the brown dwarf domain. The present review includes the most recent observations of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs to determine this IMF and the related Galactic mass budget. The IMF definitely exhibits a similar behaviour in various environments, disk, young and globular clusters, spheroid. Small scale dissipation of large scale compressible MHD turbulence seems to be the underlying triggering mechanism for star formation. Modern simulations of compressible MHD turbulence yield an IMF consistent with the one derived from observations.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bbbbcd6f8e00398c79d28752c9f6f9b1c4a6c06c

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, methodology): “If the underlying distributions are known at least approximately, as is the case in the field, it is possible to attempt to correct for the bias introduced by unresolved binaries in order to produce separate single-star and system IMFs (e.g., Chabrier 2005).”
Stellar, brown dwarf and multiple star properties from a radiation hydrodynamical simulation of star cluster formation (2011, methodology): “The cumulative mass distribution from the calculation (solid line) is compared with that of Chabrier (2005) (dot-long-dashed line) in Fig.”
STAR FORMATION IN MASSIVE CLUSTERS VIA THE WILKINSON MICROWAVE ANISOTROPY PROBE AND THE SPITZER GLIMPSE SURVEY (2009, methodology): “Figure 7b shows the mean ionizing flux per solar mass for the Scalo-type IMF used by McKee & Williams (1997) (dotdashed line), the Muench et al. (2002) IMF (solid line) , and the Chabrier (2005) IMF (long-dash line), all as a function of Γ.”
Analytical Theory for the Initial Mass Function: CO Clumps and Prestellar Cores (2008, background): “Expected Dependence of the Peak Position in the Cloud Mass One surprising piece of observational evidence is that the peak of the IMF is fairly constant from one region to another (e.g., Chabrier 2003a, 2005; Luhman 2004, 2007; Moraux et al. 2005).”
A unified model for galactic discs: star formation, turbulence driving, and mass transport (2017, methodology): “The observations have been homogenized to a Chabrier (2005) IMF and the convention for αCO suggested by Daddi et al. (2010a); see Appendix A and Krumholz et al. (2012) for details. and without transport.7 The physical origin of this difference is easy to understand.”
STAR FORMATION EFFICIENCIES AND LIFETIMES OF GIANT MOLECULAR CLOUDS IN THE MILKY WAY (2010, background): “…dN d lnm d lnm, (1) where 〈q〉 ≡ ∫ mU mL q(m∗) dN d lnm d lnm. (2) The quantitydN/d lnm is the stellar initial mass function (IMF), which we take to be either that of Muench et al. (2002) modified to have a high mass slope of−1.35 rather than their −1.21, or the IMF of Chabrier (2005).”
The Dramatic Size Evolution of Elliptical Galaxies and the Quasar Feedback (2008, methodology): “Adopting a Chabrier (2005) Initial Mass 4 Function (IMF), we find a mass loss of a factor of∼ 2 on a time scale of several Gyrs (the factor is only∼ 1.4 for a Salpeter (1955) IMF); after eq.”
ERRATUM: “THE LUMINOSITY AND MASS FUNCTIONS OF LOW-MASS STARS IN THE GALACTIC DISK. II. THE FIELD” (2010, AJ, 139, 2679) (2010, background): “The general shape of the IMF has been predicted by star formation theories that account for all of these effects (Chabrier 2003a, 2005).”
ANALYTICAL THEORY FOR THE INITIAL MASS FUNCTION. II. PROPERTIES OF THE FLOW (2009, background): “Amongst many outstanding questions, finding out what determines the stellar initial mass function (IMF) first observationally derived by Salpeter (1955) and later on by many others (e.g. Kroupa 2002, Chabrier 2003ab, 2005), constitutes a key issue.”
Theory of Star Formation (2007, background): “Research on formal turbulence theory is quite active (see Elmegreen & Scalo, 2004 for a review of the recent theoretical literature relevant to the ISM), although a comprehensive framework remains elusive.”
Phantom: A Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics and Magnetohydrodynamics Code for Astrophysics (2017, background): “The IMF produced with a barotropic equation of state does not match the observed local IMF in the Milky Way (e.g. Chabrier 2005), tending to overproduce low mass stars and brown dwarfs.”
THE EFFECTS OF RADIATIVE TRANSFER ON LOW-MASS STAR FORMATION (2009, methodology): “Adopting a scaling factor of ǫcore = 1/3 would produce a mean of m̄ ∼ 0.2 M⊙, lower than our RT mean mass and the mean mass of either the system or individual stellar initial mass function reported by Chabrier (2005).”
Compaction and quenching of high-z galaxies in cosmological simulations: blue and red nuggets (2014, methodology): “The current version of the codes uses the stellar initial mass function of Chabrier (2005).4 The code incorporates a thermal stellar feedback model, in which the combined energy from stellar winds and supernova explosions is released as a constant heating rate over 40Myr following star formation,…”
The initial conditions of star formation in the Ophiuchus main cloud: Kinematics of the protocluster condensations , (2007, unknown): “For comparison, the solid curve shows the shape of the field star IMF (e.g. Kroupa 2001), while the dashed curve corresponds to the IMF of multiple systems (e.g. Chabrier 2003, 2005).”
SUB-CHANDRASEKHAR WHITE DWARF MERGERS AS THE PROGENITORS OF TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE (2010, unknown): “A Chabrier (2005) initial mass function producesn1.”
THE HAWAII INFRARED PARALLAX PROGRAM. II. YOUNG ULTRACOOL FIELD DWARFS (2016, background): “Brown dwarfs are the lowest mass products of the star formation process and thus represent the terminus of the mass function that has been well-mapped for hydrogen-burning stars (e.g. Chabrier 2005).”
The lifecycle of molecular clouds in nearby star-forming disc galaxies (2019, methodology): “They sample stars stochastically from a Chabrier (2005) initial mass function (IMF) and use Geneva stellar evolutionary tracks (Schaller et al. 1992) with STARBURST99 spectral synthesis (Leitherer et al. 2014).8 Haydon et al. (2018) calibrate tstar,ref using an SPS model describing an instantaneous…”
Physical Processes in the Interstellar Medium (2014, background): “(197) Again A is a global normalization factor, and k1 = 0.158 and k2 = 0.0443 provide a continuous connection at m= 1 (Chabrier, 2003b, 2005; Maschberger, 2013a).”