Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2010-11-09
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
To appear in "UP: Have Observations Revealed a Variable Upper End of the Initial Mass Function?", Astronomical Society of the
Scientific paper
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 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 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.
Kroupa Pavel
Pflamm-Altenburg Jan
Weidner Carsten
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