Chemical evolution of elliptical galaxies with a variable IMF -- A publicly available code

Abstract

Growing evidence in recent years suggests a systematic variation of the stellar initial mass function (IMF), being top-heavy for starburst galaxies and possibly bottom-heavy for massive ellipticals. Galaxy chemical evolution simulations adopting an invariant canonical IMF face difficulty in simultaneously reproducing the metallicity and $\alpha$-enhancement of the massive elliptical galaxies. Applying a variable IMF that changes with time is a promising solution, however, it is non-trivial to couple a variable IMF theory with the existing galaxy evolution codes. Here we present the first open source simulation code which recalculates the galaxy-wide IMF at each time step according to the Integrated-Galactic-IMF (IGIMF) theory where the galaxy-wide IMF depends on the galactic star formation rate and metallicity. The resulting galaxy-wide IMF and metal abundance evolve with time. With this pilot work, we explore the effect of the IGIMF theory on galaxy chemical evolution in comparison with an invariant IMF.

16 pages, 18 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

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Cited by in corpus (20)

• Quantifying the Effects of Known Unknowns on Inferred High-redshift Galaxy Properties: Burstiness, the IMF, and Nebular Physics
• The most massive stars in very young star clusters with a limited mass: Evidence favours significant self-regulation in the star formation processes
• Chemical evolution of ultra-faint dwarf galaxies in the self-consistently calculated IGIMF theory
• On the variation of carbon abundance in galaxies and its implications
• The effect of the environment-dependent IMF on the formation and metallicities of stars over the cosmic history
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• Constraints on the star formation histories of galaxies in the Local Cosmological Volume
• The effect of the environment-dependent stellar initial mass function on the photometric properties of star-forming galaxies
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• Fornax 3D project: assessing the diversity of IMF and stellar population maps within the Fornax Cluster