Individual Star Sampling in Star Formation Simulations: A Semi-Deterministic Model

Abstract: In modern simulations that include star formation, it is common to use a universal and invariant initial mass function (IMF) to represent star populations or sample individual stars. However, stellar masses are determined by local and environmental processes that operate over a wide dynamical range and remain unresolved in simulations. We introduce a semi-deterministic (SDT) scheme for sampling individual stars from star-forming gas in numerical simulations. We represent unresolved molecular cores and protostellar disks with reservoir particles (RsvPs) and employ an on-the-fly friends-of-friends algorithm to identify star clusters. The instantaneous IMF for newly formed stars is then derived from the current cluster mass. We test the performance of this method in simulations of isolated molecular clouds and a major merger between two dwarf galaxies. Compared to existing IMF sampling methods, our SDT scheme naturally reproduces the observed $m_{\star,\text{max}}$-$M_\text{ecl}$ relation and yields numbers of massive stars consistent with optimal sampling theory. It also exhibits the smallest run-to-run variation among simulations with different random seeds. The regulated star formation results in a small ($\sim0.15$ Myr) but coherent time delay in the emergence of massive stars, reduces the large scatter arising from Poisson noise, and produces initial mass segregation within the clusters. On galactic scales, the SDT method predicts a steeper high-mass IMF slope at low star formation rates (SFRs), with the slope negatively correlated with the SFR. As the specific abundance of massive stars declines, we predict that H$α$-based SFR diagnostics will systematically underestimate the intrinsic SFR due to IMF sampling effects.