Metals enhance the cooling efficiency of molecular clouds,promoting fragmentation.Consequently,increasing the metallicity may boost the formation of low-mass stars.Within the integrated galactic initial mass function(...Metals enhance the cooling efficiency of molecular clouds,promoting fragmentation.Consequently,increasing the metallicity may boost the formation of low-mass stars.Within the integrated galactic initial mass function(IGIMF)theory,this effect is empirically captured by a linear relation between the slope of the low-mass stellar IMF,α_1,and the metal mass fraction,Z.This linearα_1-Z relation has been calibrated up to≈2Z_☉,though higher metallicity environments are known to exist.We show that if the linearα_1-Z relation extends to higher metallicities([Z]■0.5),massive star formation is suppressed entirely.Alternatively,fragmentation efficiency may saturate beyond some metallicity threshold if gravitational collapse cascades rapidly enough.To model this behavior,we propose a logistic function describing the transition from metallicity-sensitive to metallicityinsensitive fragmentation regimes.We provide a user-friendly public code,pyIGIMF,which enables the instantaneous computation of the IGIMF theory with both linear and logisticα_1-Z relations.展开更多
基金support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China(NSFC,grant Nos.1251101411,12041305,12173016,1257030642,12533003,and 12203021)science research grants from the China Manned Space Project with NOs.CMS-CSST-2021-A08(IMF),CMS-CSST-2021-A07+5 种基金Program for Innovative TalentsEntrepreneur in Jiangsusupported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities,No.KG202502support from the Jiangsu Funding Program for Excellent Postdoctoral Talent under grant No.2022ZB54the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under grant No.0201/14380049support through the DAAD-Eastern-European Exchange program between Bonn and Prague。
摘要Metals enhance the cooling efficiency of molecular clouds,promoting fragmentation.Consequently,increasing the metallicity may boost the formation of low-mass stars.Within the integrated galactic initial mass function(IGIMF)theory,this effect is empirically captured by a linear relation between the slope of the low-mass stellar IMF,α_1,and the metal mass fraction,Z.This linearα_1-Z relation has been calibrated up to≈2Z_☉,though higher metallicity environments are known to exist.We show that if the linearα_1-Z relation extends to higher metallicities([Z]■0.5),massive star formation is suppressed entirely.Alternatively,fragmentation efficiency may saturate beyond some metallicity threshold if gravitational collapse cascades rapidly enough.To model this behavior,we propose a logistic function describing the transition from metallicity-sensitive to metallicityinsensitive fragmentation regimes.We provide a user-friendly public code,pyIGIMF,which enables the instantaneous computation of the IGIMF theory with both linear and logisticα_1-Z relations.