2016/02/23 by F. F. S. Maia, E. Moraux, Isabelle Joncour +1 · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stw450
20 pages, 19 figures. Contains an appendix with 10 extra figures
arxiv created 2016/02/23 · openalex publication_date 2016/02/26 · arxiv updated 2016/03/16 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We provide a new view on the Cygnus-X north complex by accessing for the first time the low mass content of young stellar populations in the region. CFHT/WIRCam camera was used to perform a deep near-IR survey of this complex, sampling stellar masses down to ~0.1 M_\odot. Several analysis tools, including a extinction treatment developed in this work, were employed to identify and uniformly characterise a dozen unstudied young star clusters in the area. Investigation of their mass distributions in low-mass domain revealed a relatively uniform log-normal IMF with a characteristic mass of 0.32±0.08 M_\odot and mass dispersion of 0.40±0.06. In the high mass regime, their derived slopes showed that while the youngest clusters (age < 4 Myr) presented slightly shallower values with respect to the Salpeter's, our older clusters (4 Myr < age < 18 Myr) showed IMF compliant values and a slightly denser stellar population. Although possibly evidencing a deviation from an 'universal' IMF, these results also supports a scenario where these gas dominated young clusters gradually 'build up' their IMF by accreting low-mass stars formed in their vicinity during their first ~3 Myr, before the gas expulsion phase, emerging at the age of ~4 Myr with a fully fledged IMF. Finally, the derived distances to these clusters confirmed the existence of at least 3 different star forming regions throughout Cygnus-X north complex, at distances of 500-900 pc, 1.4-1.7 kpc and 3.0 kpc, and revealed evidence of a possible interaction between some of these stellar populations and the Cygnus-OB2 association.