Applications of the IGIMF Theory to the Astrophysics of Galaxies

Pflamm-Altenburg, J.; Weidner, C.; Kroupa, P.
Referencia bibliográfica

UP2010: Have Observations Revealed a Variable Upper End of the Initial Mass Function? ASP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 440. Proceedings of a Conference held at Sedona, Arizona, USA 20-25 June 2010 Edited by Marie Treyer, Ted K.Wyder, James D. Neill, Mark Seibert, Janice C. Lee. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2011., p.269

Fecha de publicación:
6
2011
Número de autores
3
Número de autores del IAC
0
Número de citas
5
Número de citas referidas
3
Descripción
The functional form of the galaxy-wide stellar initial mass function is of fundamental importance for understanding galaxies. So far this stellar initial mass function (IMF) has been assumed to be identical to the IMF observed directly in star clusters. But because stars form predominantly in embedded groups rather than uniformly distributed over the whole galaxy, the galaxy-wide IMF needs to be calculated by adding all IMFs of all embedded groups. This integrated galactic stellar initial mass function (IGIMF) is steeper than the canonical IMF and steepens with decreasing star formation rate (SFR), leading to fundamental new insights and understanding of star forming properties of galaxies. This contribution reviews the existing applications of the IGIMF theory to galactic astrophysics, while the parallel contribution by Weidner, Pflamm-Altenburg & Kroupa (this volume) introduces the IGIMF theory.