An excess of massive stars in the local 30 Doradus starburst.
Fabian R N SchneiderHugues SanaC J EvansJoachim M BestenlehnerNorberto CastroLuca FossatiGötz GräfenerN LangerOscar Hernán Ramírez-AgudeloCarolina Sabín-SanjuliánSergio Simón-DíazFrank TramperPaul A CrowtherAlexander de KoterSelma E de MinkPhilip L DuftonMiriam GarciaMark GielesVincent Hénault-BrunetArtemio HerreroRobert G IzzardV KalariDanny J LennonJesús Maíz ApellánizN MarkovaFrancisco NajarroPhilipp PodsiadlowskiJoachim PulsW D TaylorJacco Th van LoonJorick S VinkColin NormanPublished in: Science (New York, N.Y.) (2018)
The 30 Doradus star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud is a nearby analog of large star-formation events in the distant universe. We determined the recent formation history and the initial mass function (IMF) of massive stars in 30 Doradus on the basis of spectroscopic observations of 247 stars more massive than 15 solar masses ([Formula: see text]). The main episode of massive star formation began about 8 million years (My) ago, and the star-formation rate seems to have declined in the last 1 My. The IMF is densely sampled up to 200 [Formula: see text] and contains 32 ± 12% more stars above 30 [Formula: see text] than predicted by a standard Salpeter IMF. In the mass range of 15 to 200 [Formula: see text], the IMF power-law exponent is [Formula: see text], shallower than the Salpeter value of 2.35.