Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 322 1 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Let and let denote present stellar age, rather than time measured from the galaxy's birth. With a fixed initial mass function, constant star formation rate also gives a constant number of births per unit time, as in the birth-age distribution under constant star formation. Counting the supplied stellar evolution model's remnants as part of the population, ages have a uniform distribution on . Integrating the constant birth rate therefore givesOutside this interval the cumulative fraction is zero or one as appropriate.
Write for the birth-mass parameter and . The normalization cancels when integrating the initial mass function:Thus the mass-tail fraction isIt is one at and below the lower cutoff. The normalization constant has no effect on any number fraction.
For evolutionary-state selection by stellar lifetimes, a red giant has completed its main sequence lifetime but not its giant lifetime. Its stellar lifetime regions in a mass-age diagram are bounded byThe lower boundary meets at and the upper boundary meets it at . A white dwarf lies above the upper lifetime curve, within the same age interval.
The probability integral transform, applied to the decreasing mass-tail coordinate, makes uniform on : . The independent birth age gives uniform on , so number fractions are areas in a unit square. Since , the red giant region becomes , a triangle with vertices , and . Its area is . The white dwarf region is a triangle of area . Hence the present individual-star fractions areThe rest are on the main sequence under the given toy lifetime model.
For the binary stars, draw two independent mass-tail coordinates , but only one shared age coordinate : components born together are coeval. The coeval binary population therefore occupies a uniform unit cube . At a fixed age , the state probabilities for either component areTheir evolutionary states have conditional independence given . They generally do not have unconditional independence, because sharing an age correlates their states. The binary fractions below are slice areas averaged over .
