Monte Carlo simulations of the initial stellar mass function

The Larson (1973) model for the initial stellar mass function was investigated with a Monte Carlo simulation and with a simple analytical model. The number of fragments per fragmentation event, the fractional masses of the fragments, and the total number of fragmentation events per star were all allowed to be stochastic variables with normal or power-law distributions. The resulting fragment mass function always converged to a log–normal after only four or five fragmentation events, regardless of the functional form for the distributions of the stochastic variables. The dispersion of this final distribution could be fit to the observed dispersion of the initial stellar mass function using a variety of combinations of input parameters. Thus the details of the fragmentation processes may be completely lost during star formation.