This work reveals a link between the IMF slope and the radius-density relation in gas clouds, suggesting important implications for star formation.
The stellar initial mass function is of great significance for the study of star formation and galactic structure. Observations indicate that the IMF follows a power-law form. This work derived that when the expected number of stars formed from a spherical molecular cloud is much greater than 1, there is a relationship between the slope α of the IMF and rⁿ in the radius-density relation of spherically symmetric gas clouds, given by α = 3/(n+3) (ΓIMF = n/(n+3)). This conclusion is close to the results of numerical simulations and observations, but it is derived from a pure probabilistic model, which may have underlying reasons worth pondering.
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Yunzhong Shen (2025) studied this question.
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