An IMF Study of the Dwarf Starburst Galaxy NGC 4214

Abstract

The production rate of ionizing photons in young < 8 Myr, unresolved stellar clusters in the nearby irregular galaxy NGC 4214 is probed using multi-wavelength Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 data. We normalize the ionizing photon rate by the cluster mass to investigate the upper end of the stellar initial mass function (IMF). We have found that within the uncertainties the upper end of the stellar IMF appears to be universal in this galaxy, and that deviations from a universal IMF can be attributed to stochastic sampling of stars in clusters with masses < 10^3 M_sun. Furthermore, we have found that there does not seem to be a dependence of the maximum stellar mass on the cluster mass. We have also found that for massive clusters, feedback may cause an underrepresentation in Ha luminosities, which needs to be taken into account when conducting this type of analysis.

11 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (13)

• A systematic variation of the stellar initial mass function in early-type galaxies
• An H-alpha Imaging Survey of Galaxies in the Local 11 Mpc Volume
• On the Evolutionary History of Stars and their Fossil Mass and Light
• Diverging UV and Halpha fluxes of star forming galaxies predicted by the IGIMF theory
• On the Similarity between Cluster and Galactic Stellar Initial Mass Functions
• Using H-alpha Morphology and Surface Brightness Fluctuations to Age-Date Star Clusters in M83
• The Stellar Mass Distribution in the Giant Star Forming Region NGC 346
• Extragalactic Constraints on the Initial Mass Function
• No evidence for mass segregation in massive young clusters
• Biases on initial mass function determinations. II. Real multiple systems and chance superpositions
• The young stellar population of NGC 4214 as observed with HST. II. Results
• The cluster birthline in M33
• The young stellar population of NGC 4214 as observed with HST. I. Data and methods

Cited by in corpus (45)

• The Big Problems in Star Formation: the Star Formation Rate, Stellar Clustering, and the Initial Mass Function
• Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey (LEGUS) with The Hubble Space Telescope. I. Survey Description
• SLUG -- Stochastically Lighting Up Galaxies. III: A Suite of Tools for Simulated Photometry, Spectroscopy, and Bayesian Inference with Stochastic Stellar Populations
• The Dawes Review 8: Measuring the Stellar Initial Mass Function
• A Comparative Study of Density Field Estimation for Galaxies: New Insights into the Evolution of Galaxies with Environment in COSMOS out to z~3
• A Closer look at Bursty Star Formation with $L_{H\alpha }$ and $L_{UV}$ Distributions
• The mmax-Mecl relation, the IMF and IGIMF: probabilistically sampled functions?
• SLUG - Stochastically Lighting Up Galaxies. II: Quantifying the Effects of Stochasticity on Star Formation Rate Indicators
• Nonthermal particles and photons in starburst regions and superbubbles
• The optimally-sampled galaxy-wide stellar initial mass function - Observational tests and the publicly available GalIMF code
• Dependency of dynamical ejections of O stars on the masses of very young star clusters
• Connecting Young Star Clusters to CO Molecular Gas in NGC 7793 with ALMA-LEGUS
• The Spatial Relation between Young Star Clusters and Molecular Clouds in M 51 with LEGUS
• The Bursty Star Formation Histories of Low-mass Galaxies at $0.4<z<1$ Revealed by Star Formation Rates Measured from H$\beta$ and FUV
• The dust-to-stellar mass ratio as a valuable tool to probe the evolution of local and distant star forming galaxies
• Spitzer Local Volume Legacy (LVL) SEDs and Physical Properties
• The Evolution and Properties of Rotating Massive Star Populations
• The Spitzer Local Volume Legacy (LVL) Global Optical Photometry
• The most massive stars in very young star clusters with a limited mass: Evidence favours significant self-regulation in the star formation processes
• Roll of the Dice: A Stochastically Sampled IMF Alters the Stellar Content of Simulated Dwarf Galaxies
• The sensitivity of stellar feedback to IMF averaging versus IMF sampling in galaxy formation simulations
• The Formation of Very Massive Stars
• Early Dust Formation and a Massive Progenitor for SN 2011ja?
• Big Fish in Small Ponds: Massive Stars in the Low Mass Clusters of M83
• Sampling methods for stellar masses and the mmax-Mecl relation in the starburst dwarf galaxy NGC 4214
• Spaxel Analysis: Probing the Physics of Star Formation in Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies
• Exploring the IMF of star clusters: a joint SLUG and LEGUS effort
• An analysis of star formation with Herschel in the Hi-GAL Survey. II. The tips of the Galactic bar
• Does God play dice with star clusters?
• Was the Milky Way a chain galaxy? Using the IGIMF theory to constrain the thin-disk star formation history and mass
• Comparing Models for IMF Variation Across Cosmological Time in Milky Way-like Galaxies
• A spatially resolved analysis of star-formation burstiness by comparing UV and H$\alpha$ in galaxies at z$\sim$1 with UVCANDELS
• Stochastic stellar cluster IMFs: Models and impact on integrated cluster parameter determination
• Spatially Resolved Dust, Gas, and Star Formation in the Dwarf Magellanic Irregular NGC4449
• Modeling the physical properties in the ISM of the low-metallicity galaxy NGC4214
• Finding the UV-Visible Path Forward: Proceedings of the Community Workshop to Plan the Future of UV/Visible Space Astrophysics
• Runaway stars masquerading as star formation in galactic outskirts
• A new approach for short-spacing correction of radio interferometric data sets
• Cosmic history of integrated galactic stellar initial mass function : a simulation study
• The initial mass function of stars and the star-formation rates of galaxies
• A modern view of galaxies and their stellar populations
• A starburst in the core of a galaxy cluster: The dwarf irregular NGC 1427A in Fornax
• Resolved photometry of Young Massive Clusters in the starburst galaxy NGC 4214
• The Future of IMF studies with the ELT and MICADO I: The local Universe as a resolved IMF laboratory
• The mmax-Mecl relation in the LEGUS clusters