Artículo de revista
The unexpectedly large proportion of high-mass starforming cores in a Galactic mini-starburst
Fecha
2018Autor
Motte, F.
Nomy, T.
Louvet, F.
Marsh, K.A.
Bontemps, S.
Whitworth, A. P.
Men’shchikov, A.
Nguyen Luong6, Q.
Csengeri, T.
Maury, A. J.
Gusdorf, A.
Chapillon, E.
Könyves, V.
Schilke, P.
Duarte Cabral, A.
Didelon, P.
Gaudel, M.
Institución
Resumen
Understanding the processes that determine the stellar Initial Mass Function (IMF) is a critical unsolved problem, with profound implications for many areas of astrophysics1. In molecular clouds, stars are formed in cores, gas condensations which are suffciently dense that gravitational collapse converts a large fraction of their mass into a star or small clutch of stars. In nearby star-formation regions, the core mass function (CMF) is strikingly similar to the IMF, suggesting that the shape of the IMF may simply be inherited from the CMF2–5. Here we present 1:3mm observations, obtained with ALMA, the world’s largest interferometer,
of the active star-formation region W43-MM1, which may be more representative of the Galactic-disk regions where most stars form6, 7 . The unprecedented resolution of these observations reveals, for the first time, a statistically robust CMF at high masses, with a slope that is markedly shallower than the IMF. This seriously challenges our understanding of the origin of the IMF.