Mapping the core mass function to the initial mass function

Understand

It has been shown that fragmentation within self-gravitating, turbulent molecular clouds ("turbulent fragmentation") can naturally explain the observed properties of protostellar cores, including the core mass function (CMF).

• Here, we extend recently-developed analytic models for turbulent fragmentation to follow the time-dependent hierarchical fragmentation of self-gravitating cores, until they reach effectively infinite density (and form stars).
• We show that turbulent fragmentation robustly predicts two key features of the IMF.
• First, a high-mass power-law scaling very close to the Salpeter slope, which is a generic consequence of the scale-free nature of turbulence and self-gravity.