The initial mass function and history of the star-formation rate in star-forming complexes in galaxies

The positions of star-forming complexes (SFCs) in color-luminosity, color-color, and chemical composition-luminosity diagrams are determined by the star-formation regime (history). Taking into account the fraction of Lyman continuum photons that are not absorbed by hydrogen, we find a strong correlation between the observed color indices and the total Lyman continuum flux from the stars in SFCs. The distribution of extragalactic SFCs in a plot of the slope of the initial mass function (IMF) versus the density of stars cannot be distinguished from this distribution for clusters in the Galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud, where the IMF slopes were derived directly from star counts.