Evidence for top-heavy stellar initial mass functions with increasing density and decreasing metallicity

TL;DR

This study provides evidence that the stellar initial mass function in globular clusters was top-heavy, especially in low-metallicity and high-density environments, impacting galaxy evolution and chemical enrichment.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the IMF varies with cluster density and metallicity, revealing a fundamental plane linking these parameters and the IMF's shape.

Findings

IMF becomes more top-heavy at lower metallicity

IMF varies with pre-GC cloud-core density

A fundamental plane describes IMF variation

Abstract

Residual-gas expulsion after cluster formation has recently been shown to leave an imprint in the low-mass present-day stellar mass function (PDMF) which allowed the estimation of birth conditions of some Galactic globular clusters (GCs) such as mass, radius and star formation efficiency. We show that in order to explain their characteristics (masses, radii, metallicity, PDMF) their stellar initial mass function (IMF) must have been top-heavy. It is found that the IMF is required to become more top-heavy the lower the cluster metallicity and the larger the pre-GC cloud-core density are. The deduced trends are in qualitative agreement with theoretical expectation. The results are consistent with estimates of the shape of the high-mass end of the IMF in the Arches cluster, Westerlund 1, R136 and NGC 3603, as well as with the IMF independently constrained for ultra-compact dwarf galaxies (UCDs). The latter suggests that GCs and UCDs might have formed along the same channel or that UCDs formed via mergers of GCs. A fundamental plane is found which describes the variation of the IMF with density and metallicity of the pre-GC cloud-cores simultaneously. The implications for the evolution of galaxies and chemical enrichment over cosmological times are expected to be major.