The Initial Mass Function 50 Years Later

ISBN-13: 9789400789067 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 551 str.

Edvige Corbelli;Francesco Palla;Hans Zinnecker

Opis

Theideatocelebrate50yearsoftheSalpeterIMFoccurredduringtherecent IAU General Assembly in Sydney, Australia. Indeed, it was from Australia that in July 1954 Ed Salpeter submitted his famous paper "The Luminosity Function and Stellar Evolution" with the rst derivation of the empirical stellar IMF. This contribution was to become one of the most famous astrophysics papers of the last 50 years. Here, Ed Salpeter introduced the terms "original mass function" and "original luminosity function," and estimated the pro- bility for the creation of stars of given mass at a particular time, now known as the "Salpeter Initial Mass Function," or IMF. The paper was written at the Australian National University in Canberra on leave of absence from Cornell University (USA) and was published in 1955 as 7 page note in the Astroph- ical Journal Vol. 121, page 161. To celabrate the 50th anniversary of the IMF, along with Ed Salpeter s 80th birthday, we have organized a special meeting that brought together scientists involved in the empirical determination of this fundamental quantity in a va- ety of astrophysical contexts and other scientists fascinated by the deep imp- cations of the IMF on star formation theories, on the physical conditions of the gas before and after star formation, and on galactic evolution and cosmology. The meeting took place in one of the most beautiful spots of the Tuscan countryside, far from the noise and haste of everyday life."

Spis treści

Preface,List of Participants,Part I The IMF Concept through Time, Introduction to IMF@50, Ed, me, and the Insterstellar Medium,The IMF challenge - 25 questions, Fifty years of IMF variation: the intermediate-mass stars, The Initial Mass Function: from Salpeter 1955 to 2005, Part II The IMF in our Galaxy: Clusters and field stars, The field IMF across the H-burning, The 0.03-10M.mass function of young open clusters, The time spread of star formation in the Pleiades, Age spreads in clusters and associations: the lithium test, The Initial Mass Function of three galactic open clusters, The stellar IMF of galactic clusters and its evolution, Two stages of star formation in globular clusters and the IMF, The stellar Initial Mass Function in the Galactic Center, The Initial Mass Function in the Galactic Bulge, Halo mass function 101, Part III The IMF in our Galaxy: Star forming regions, Embedded clusters and the IMF, The IMF of stars and brown dwarfs in star forming regions, The substellar IMF of the Taurus cloud, The low-mass end of the IMF in Chamaeleon I, Limitations of the IR-excess method for identifying young stars, The IMF of Class II objects in the active Serpens cloud core, Orionis: a 0.02-50M. IMF, Does the "stellar" IMF extend to planetary masses?, Estimating the low-mass IMF in OB associations: Orionis, Young brown dwarfs in Orion, The formation of free-floating brown dwarves & planetary-mass objects by photo-erosion of prestellar cores, IMF in small young embedded star clusters, The Arches cluster - a case for IMF variations?, The IMF and mass segregation in young galactic starburst clusters, A 2.2 micron catalogue of stars in NGC 3603, The IMF of the massive star forming region NGC 3603 from VLT adaptive optics observations, X-rays and young clusters, NGC 2264: a Chandra view, Part IV The Extragalactic IMF, Variations of the IMF, On the form of the IMF: upper-mass cutoff and slope, Evidence for a fundamental stellar upper mass limit from clustered star formation, Monte Carlo experiments on star cluster induced integrated-galaxy IMF variations, The initial conditions to star formation: low-mass stars at low metallicity, Stellar associations in the LMC, The IMF long ago and far away, The massive star IMF at high metallicity, The Initial Mass Function in disc galaxies and in galaxy clusters: the chemo-photometric picture, Steeper, flatter, or just Salpeter? Evidence from galaxy evolution and

galaxy clusters, Initial mass function and galactic chemical evolution models, New database of SSPs with different IMFs, The starburst IMF ñ An impossible measurement?, Gould's Belt to starburst galaxies: the IMF of extreme star formation, Mid-IR observations at high spatial resolution: constraints on the IMF in very young embedded super star clusters, Wolf-Rayet stars as IMF probes, Part V The Origin of the IMF: Atomic and molecular gas tracers, Smidgens of fuel for star formation, The Initial Mass Function in the context of warm ionized gas in disk galaxies, Tracing the star formation cycle through the diffuse Interstellar Medium, Examining the relationship between interstellar turbulence and star formation, The IMF of Giant Molecular Clouds, Multiphase molecular gas and star forming sites in M33, How does star formation build a galactic disk?, Mapping extragalactic molecular clouds: Centaurus A (NGC 5128), Tiny HI clouds in the local ISM, Submm observations of prestellar condensations: probing the initial conditions for the IMF, How well determined is the core mass function of Oph?, From dense cores to protostars in low-mass star forming regions, Fragmentation of a high-mass star forming core, Part VI The Origin of the IMF: Cloud fragmentation and collapse, Understanding the IMF, Flows, filaments and fragmentation, Minimum mass for opacity-limited fragmentation in dynamically triggered star formation, Origin of the core mass function, The connection between the core mass function and the IMF in Taurus, The stellar IMF as a property of turbulence, The stellar mass spectrum from non-isothermal gravoturbulent fragmentation,

Turbulent control of the star formation efficiency, Thermal condensation in a turbulent atomic hydrogen flow, The formation of molecular clouds, Turbulence-accelerated star formation in magnetized clouds, Cluster density and the IMF, Part VII The Origin of the IMF: From gas to stars, A theory of the IMF, A class of IMF theories, An effective Initial Mass Function for galactic disks, Competitive accretion and the IMF, The dependence of the IMF on initial conditions, A minimum hypothesis explanation for an IMF with a lognormal body and power law tail, Feedback and the Initial Mass Function, Feedback in star formation simulations: implications for the IMF, Massive star feedback on the IMF, Discussion: Turbulence and magnetic fields in clouds, Part VIII The "Initial" IMF, The primordial IMF, Cosmic relevance of the first stars,

Star formation triggered by first supernovae, Detecting primordial stars, Constraints on the IMF in low metallicity and PopIII environments, Thermal evolution of star forming clouds in low metallicity environment, Observational evidence for a different IMF in the early Galaxy, The role of the IMF in the cosmic metal production, From Population III stars to (super)massive black holes, Gamma-ray burst afterglows as probes of high-z star formation, Part IX Chuzpah talks, Electrostatic screening of nuclear reactions 50 years later, The life and death of Planetary Nebulae, Early results from the infrared spectrograph on the Spitzer Space Telescope, Future observational opportunities, Author Index

O autorze

Francesco Palla is a senior astronomer at the INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, in Florence, Italy. His collaboration with Steven Stahler began at Cornell University, where he worked as an ESA fellow. His research interests include both observational and theoretical aspects of the interstellar medium and star formation.

Blurb

The Book contains the proceedings of a Conference intended to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the introduction of the IMF concept by Ed Salpeter along with Ed Salpeter's 80^th birthday.
It summarizes a vast amounts of information, and updates the Herstmonceux book on the IMF,(eds. Howell and Gilmore, 1998 - ASP publ).
The book collects many long reviews on IMF determinations in the Galaxy, in galaxies, and in the Early Universe as well as deep implications of the IMF on star formation theories and on the physical conditions of the gas before and after star formation. It provides basic information needed for the coverage of these important quantities in graduate courses of Stellar Evolution, Star Formation, Interstellar Medium, Galactic Dynamics, Formation and Evolution of Galaxies.
The book covers all aspects of the current researches in this field, as testified by the large number of contributing scientists.