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The observed slope at the high-mass end of the initial mass function (IMF)displays a remarkable universality in a wide variety of physical environments.We predict that competitive accretion, the ongoing accretion of gas from acommon reservoir by a collection of protostellar cores, can provide a naturalexplanation for such a universal slope in star forming regions withmetallicities roughly greater than 1e-5 the solar value. In our discussion, wepoint out that competitive accretion will occur whenever a gaseous region hasmultiple Jeans masses of material and contains large-scale motions that arecontrolled by the gravitational potential well. We describe how and when theseconditions can be reached during the chemical enrichment of the Universe,showing that they can occur for a wide range of metallicities and environmentalconditions. We also discuss the ability of other physical processes to limitthe effects of further accretion onto protostellar cores. Current theoreticaland numerical studies show that competitive accretion is robust againstdisrupting effects - such as feedback from young stars, supersonic turbulenceand magnetic fields - in all but the most extreme cases.

On the constancy of the high-mass slope of the initial mass function