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Stellar populations in starburst galaxies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2016

Robert D. Joseph
Robert D. Joseph*
Affiliation:
Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, USA

Abstract

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Many galaxies emit a dominant fraction of their bolometric luminosity in the infrared. The small mass-luminosity ratios suggest that these infrared luminosities cannot be sustained by a normal stellar population over a Hubble time. The commonly held explanation is that there has been a burst of star formation sufficiently recently that the full spectrum of the initial mass function up to the highest mass stars is contributing to the luminosity. Starburst galaxies therefore provide laboratories for studying the upper end of the initial mass function.

After a briefly summarizing studies of the IMF in the solar neighborhood and in nearby ‘normal’ galaxies, I will turn to studies of environments in which there appears to be evidence for a somewhat different IMF, viz., in starburst galaxies. I will discuss infrared spectroscopic diagnostics of a sample of the most luminous starburst galaxies and what this implies for the IMFs in these ‘violent’ star formation events.

Type
Part 5. Wolf-Rayet stars and other massive stars in starburst galaxies: the case of Wolf-Rayet galaxies (integrated spectra)
Information
Symposium - International Astronomical Union , Volume 193: Wolf-Rayet Phenomena in Massive Stars and Starburst Galaxies , 1999 , pp. 568 - 577
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of the Pacific 1999 

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