A Theory of the Initial Mass Function for Star Formation in Molecular Clouds

We present a class of models for the initial mass function (IMF) for stars forming within molecular clouds. This class of models uses the idea that stars determine their own masses through the action of powerful stellar outflows. This concept allows us to calculate a semi-empirical mass formula (SEMF), which provides the transformation between initial conditions in molecular clouds and the final masses of forming stars. For a particular SEMF, a given distribution of initial conditions predicts a corresponding IMF. In this paper, we consider several different descriptions for the distribution of initial conditions in star forming molecular clouds. We first consider the limiting case in which only one physical variable – the effective sound speed – determines the initial conditions. In this limit, we use observed scaling laws to determine the distribution of sound speed and the SEMF to convert this distribution into an IMF. We next consider the opposite limit in which many different independent physical variables play a role in determining stellar masses. In this limit, the central limit theorem shows that the IMF approaches a log-normal form. Realistic star forming regions contain an intermediate number of relevant variables; we thus consider intermediate cases between the two limits. Our results show that this picture of star formation and the IMF naturally produces stellar mass distributions that are roughly consistent with observations. This paper thus provides a calculational framework to construct theoretical models of the IMF. Subject headings: stars: formation – ISM: clouds – galaxies: formation