Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2009-09-08
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
26 pages, 13 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS
Scientific paper
We present a thorough literature study of the most-massive star, m_max, in several young star clusters in order to assess whether or not star clusters are populated from the stellar initial mass function (IMF) by random sampling over the mass range 0.01 < m < 150 M_sol without being constrained by the cluster mass, M_ecl. The data reveal a partition of the sample into lowest mass objects (M_ecl < 10^2 M_sol), moderate mass clusters (10^2 M_sol < M_ecl < 10^3 M_sol) and rich clusters above 10^3 M_sol. Additionally, there is a plateau of a constant maximal star mass (m_max ~ 25 M_sol) for clusters with masses between 10^3 M_sol and 4 10^3 M_sol. Statistical tests of this data set reveal that the hypothesis of random sampling from the IMF between 0.01 and 150 M_sol is highly unlikely for star clusters more massive than 10^2 M_sol with a probability of p ~ 2 10^-7 for the objects with M_ecl between 10^2 M_sol and 10^3 M_sol and p ~ 3 10^-9 for the more massive star clusters. Also, the spread of m_max values at a given M_ecl is smaller than expected from random sampling. We suggest that the basic physical process able to explain this dependence of stellar inventory of a star cluster on its mass may be the interplay between stellar feedback and the binding energy of the cluster-forming molecular cloud core. Given these results, it would follow that an integrated galactic initial mass function (IGIMF) sampled from such clusters would automatically be steeper in comparison to the IMF within individual star clusters.
Bonnell Ian
Kroupa Pavel
Weidner Carsten
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