Star formation efficiency and the initial mass function
This text mentions work from 2024 on. Those parts were partly written without a live literature search and have not been checked by an editor yet.
Clouds of cold gas turn only a few percent of their mass into stars before they are dispersed, and the new stars come out in a nearly fixed mix of light and heavy ones, called the initial mass function. Why the efficiency is so low and whether the mass mix is the same everywhere, including in the first galaxies, are unsolved.
Why it matters
Every estimate of galaxy masses, chemical enrichment and star formation history depends on these two numbers.
Review
P. Hennebelle, M. Y. Grudic, The Physical Origin of the Stellar Initial Mass Function, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2024. https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.07301 reference checked
Timestamp record
- Signed record
- 1d2b0b50573b…
- Public log
- Entry 56, in checkpoint 2,123
- In the log by
- Block 969,698, 2026-10-03
This text was in the PubPhys log by that date. The date says nothing about when the problem was first posed.