What does the IMF really tell us about star formation?

Abstract

Obtaining accurate measurements of the initial mass function (IMF) is often considered to be the key to understanding star formation, and a universal IMF is often assumed to imply a universal star formation process. Here, we illustrate that different modes of star formation can result in the same IMF, and that, in order to truly understand star formation, a deeper understanding of the primordial binary population is necessary. Detailed knowledge on the binary fraction, mass ratio distribution, and other binary parameters, as a function of mass, is a requirement for recovering the star formation process from stellar population measurements.

To be published in the proceedings of IAU Symposium 262 "Stellar Populations - Planning for the Next Decade"

References in corpus (4)

• Exploring the consequences of pairing algorithms for binary stars
• The relationship between the prestellar core mass function and the stellar initial mass function
• The initial conditions of star formation VIII: an observational study of the Ophiuchus cloud L1688 and implications for the prestellar core mass function
• What does a universal IMF imply about star formation?