SCYON Abstract

Received on October 10 2009

Galactic consequences of clustered star formation

Authors	M.R. Haas (¹) and P. Anders (²)
Affiliation	(¹) Leiden Observatory (²) Astronomical Institute of Utrecht University
To appear in	the proceedings of the conference/workshop, Star clusters: basic galactic building blocks throughout time and space (IAU S266), held in Rio de Janeiro 10/08 -- 14/08/2009, Cambridge University Press
Contact	haas@strw.leidenuniv.nl
URL	http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.4410
Links

Abstract

If all stars form in clusters and both the stars and the clusters follow a power law distribution which favours the creation of low mass objects, then the numerous low mass clusters will be deficient in high mass stars. Therefore, the mass function of stars, integrated over the whole galaxy (the Integrated Galactic Initial Mass Function, IGIMF) will be steeper at the high mass end than the underlying IMF of the stars. We show how the steepness of the IGIMF depends on the sampling method and on the assumptions made for the star cluster mass function. We also investigate the O-star content, integrated photometry and chemical enrichment of galaxies that result from several IGIMFs, as compared to more standard IMFs.