2016/05/06 by Jihye Shin, Sungsoo S. Kim
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Cluster (spacecraft) #Initial mass function #Low Mass #Photometry (optics) #Physics #Star cluster #Star formation #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stw1072
10 pages, 11 figures, To appear in June 2016 issue of MNRAS. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1411.3458
openalex publication_date 2016/05/06 · arxiv created 2016/05/09 · arxiv updated 2016/05/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The Quintuplet and Arches clusters, which were formed in the harsh environment of the Galactic Centre (GC) a few million years ago, have been excellent targets for studying the effects of a star-forming environment on the initial mass function (IMF). In order to estimate the shape of the low-end IMF of the Arches cluster, Shin & Kim devised a novel photometric method that utilizes pixel intensity histograms (PIHs) of the observed images. Here, we apply the PIH method to the Quintuplet cluster and estimate the shape of its low-end IMF below the magnitude of completeness limit as set by conventional photometry. We found that the low-end IMF of the Quintuplet is consistent with that found for the Arches cluster—Kroupa MF, with a significant number of low-mass stars below 1 M⊙. We conclude that the most likely IMFs of the Quintuplet and the Arches clusters are not too different from the IMFs found in the Galactic disc. We also find that the observed PIHs and stellar number density profiles of both clusters are best reproduced when the clusters are assumed to be at three-dimensional distances of approximately 100 pc from the GC.