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Cited by 599

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 35 of the 35 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Systematic variation of the stellar initial mass function in early-type galaxies

Open access
Cappellari, Michele, McDermid, Richard M., Alatalo, Katherine, Blitz, Leo, Bois, Maxime, Bournaud, Frédéric, Bureau, M., Crocker, Alison F., Davies, Roger L., Davis, Timothy A., de Zeeuw, P. T., Duc, Pierre-Alain, Emsellem, Eric, Khochfar, Sadegh, Krajnović, Davor, Kuntschner, Harald, Lablanche, Pierre-Yves, Morganti, Raffaella, Naab, Thorsten, Oosterloo, Tom, Sarzi, Marc, Scott, Nicholas, Serra, Paolo, Weijmans, Anne-Marie, Young, Lisa M.·2012·Nature
DOI 10.1038/nature10972
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Abstract

Much of our knowledge of galaxies comes from analysing the radiation emitted by their stars, which depends on the present number of each type of star in the galaxy. The present number depends on the stellar initial mass function (IMF), which describes the distribution of stellar masses when the population formed, and knowledge of it is critical to almost every aspect of galaxy evolution. More than 50 years after the first IMF determination, no consensus has emerged on whether it is universal among different types of galaxies. Previous studies indicated that the IMF and the dark matter fraction in galaxy centres cannot both be universal, but they could not convincingly discriminate between the two possibilities. Only recently were indications found that massive elliptical galaxies may not have the same IMF as the Milky Way. Here we report a study of the two-dimensional stellar kinematics for the large representative ATLAS3D sample of nearby early-type galaxies spanning two orders of magnitude in stellar mass, using detailed dynamical models. We find a strong systematic variation in IMF in early-type galaxies as a function of their stellar mass-to-light ratios, producing differences of a factor of up to three in galactic stellar mass. This implies that a galaxy’s IMF depends intimately on the galaxy's formation history.

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Metadata

Authors
Cappellari, M., McDermid, R. M., Alatalo, K., Blitz, L., Bois, M., Bournaud, F., Bureau, M., Crocker, A. F., Davies, R. L., Davis, T. A., de Zeeuw, P. T., Duc, P.-A., Emsellem, E., Khochfar, S., Krajnović, D., Kuntschner, H., Lablanche, P.-Y., Morganti, R., Naab, T., Oosterloo, T., Sarzi, M., Scott, N., Serra, P., Weijmans, A.-M., & Young, L. M.
Venue
Nature
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2012-04
Volume
484
Issue
7395
Pages
485-488
ISSN
  • 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
  • 1476-4687
DOI
10.1038/nature10972
OpenAlex
W2105954496
Cited by
599
References
35
FWCI
44.83
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Systematic variation of the stellar initial mass function in early-type galaxies. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1038/nature10972
The paper
Cappellari, M., McDermid, R. M., Alatalo, K., Blitz, L., Bois, M., Bournaud, F., Bureau, M., Crocker, A. F., Davies, R. L., Davis, T. A., de Zeeuw, P. T., Duc, P.-A., Emsellem, E., Khochfar, S., Krajnović, D., Kuntschner, H., Lablanche, P.-Y., Morganti, R., Naab, T., . . . Young, L. M. (2012). Systematic variation of the stellar initial mass function in early-type galaxies. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10972

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.