Published in

American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 1(779), p. 9, 2013

DOI: 10.1088/0004-637x/779/1/9

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Origin of a bottom-heavy stellar initial mass function in elliptical galaxies

Journal article published in 2013 by Kenji Bekki ORCID
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Red circle
Postprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Upload
Policy details
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

We investigate the origin of a bottom-heavy stellar initial mass function (IMF) recently observed in elliptical galaxies by using chemical evolution models with a non-universal IMF. We adopt the Kroupa IMF with the three slopes (alpha_1, alpha_2, and alpha_3) dependent on metallicities ([Fe/H]) and densities (rho_g) of star-forming gas clouds and thereby search for the best IMF model that can reproduce (i) the observed steep IMF slope (alpha_2 ~ 3, i.e., bottom-heavy) for low stellar masses (m