Mass segregation in young compact star clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud: II. Mass Functions

We review the complications involved in the conversion of stellar luminosities into masses and apply a range of mass-to-luminosity relations to our Hubble Space Telescope observations of the young LMC star clusters NGC 1805 and NGC 1818. Both the radial dependence of the mass function (MF) and the dependence of the cluster core radii on mass indicate clear mass segregation in both clusters at radii r <= 20-30'', for masses in excess of ~1.6-2.5 Msun. This result does not depend on the mass range used to fit the slopes or the metallicity assumed. It is clear that the cluster MFs, at any radius, are not simple power laws. The global and the annular MFs near the core radii appear to be characterised by similar slopes in the mass range (-0.15 <= log m/Msun <= 0.85), the MFs beyond r >= 30'' have significantly steeper slopes. We estimate that while the NGC 1818 cluster core is between ~5 and ~30 crossing times old, the core of NGC 1805 is likely $\lesssim 3-4$ crossing times old. However, since strong mass segregation is observed out to ~6 Rcore and ~3 Rcore in NGC 1805 and NGC 1818, respectively, it is most likely that significant primordial mass segregation was present in both clusters, particularly in NGC 1805.Comment: 16 pages, incl. 9 embedded postscript figures, MNRAS, resubmitted (referee's comments included

Planets around evolved intermediate-mass stars. I. Two substellar companions in the open clusters NGC 2423 and NGC 4349

Context. Many efforts are being made to characterize extrasolar planetary systems and unveil the fundamental mechanisms of planet formation. An important aspect of the problem, which remains largely unknown, is to understand how the planet formation process depends on the mass of the parent star. In particular, as most planets discovered to date orbit a solar-mass primary, little is known about planet formation around more massive stars. Aims. To investigate this point, we present first results from a radial velocity planet search around red giants in the clump of intermediate-age open clusters. We choose clusters harbouring red giants with masses between 1.5 and 4 M_sun, using the well-known cluster parameters to accurately determine the stellar masses. We are therefore exploring a poorly-known domain of primary masses, which will bring new insights into the properties of extrasolar planetary systems. Methods. We are following a sample of about 115 red giants with the Coralie and HARPS spectrographs to obtain high-precision radial velocity (RV) measurements and detect giant planets around these stars. We use bisector and activity index diagnostics to distinguish between planetary-induced RV variations and stellar photospheric jitter. Results. We present the discoveries of a giant planet and a brown dwarf in the open clusters NGC 2423 and NGC 4349, orbiting the 2.4 M_sun-star NGC2423 No3 (TYC 5409-2156-1) and the 3.9 M_sun-star NGC4349 No127 (TYC 8975-2606-1). These low-mass companions have orbital periods of 714 and 678 days and minimum masses of 10.6 and 19.8 M_jup, respectively. Combined with the other known planetary systems, these detections indicate that the frequency of massive planets is higher around intermediate-mass stars, and therefore probably scales with the mass of the protoplanetary disk.Comment: 9 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in A&

The influence of stellar-dynamical ejections and collisions on the relation between the maximum-star and star-cluster-mass

We perform the largest currently available set of direct N-body calculations of young star cluster models to study the dynamical influence, especially through the ejections of the most massive star in the cluster, on the current relation between the maximum-stellar-mass and the star-cluster-mass. We vary several initial parameters such as the initial half-mass radius of the cluster, the initial binary fraction, and the degree of initial mass segregation. Two different pairing methods are used to construct massive binaries for more realistic initial conditions of massive binaries. We find that lower mass clusters (<= 10^2.5 Msun) do not shoot out their heaviest star. In the case of massive clusters (>= 1000 Msun), no most-massive star escapes the cluster within 3 Myr regardless of the initial conditions if clusters have initial half-mass radii, r_0.5, >= 0.8 pc. However, a few of the initially smaller sized clusters (r_0.5 = 0.3 pc), which have a higher density, eject their most massive star within 3 Myr. If clusters form with a compact size and their massive stars are born in a binary system with a mass-ratio biased towards unity, the probability that the mass of the most massive star in the cluster changes due to the ejection of the initially most massive star can be as large as 20 per cent. Stellar collisions increase the maximum-stellar-mass in a large number of clusters when clusters are relatively dense (M_ecl >= 10^3 Msun and r_0.5 = 0.3 pc) and binary-rich. Overall, we conclude that dynamical effects hardly influence the observational maximum-stellar-mass -- cluster mass relation.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, 5 tables, accepted for publication in MNRA

Mass and luminosity evolution of young stellar objects

A model of protostar mass and luminosity evolution in clusters gives new estimates of cluster age, protostar birthrate, accretion rate and mean accretion time. The model assumes constant protostar birthrate, core-clump accretion, and equally likely accretion stopping. Its parameters are set to reproduce the initial mass function, and to match protostar luminosity distributions in nearby star-forming regions. It obtains cluster ages and birthrates from the observed numbers of protostars and pre-main sequence (PMS) stars, and from the modal value of the protostar luminosity. In 31 embedded clusters and complexes the global cluster age is 1-3 Myr, matching available estimates based on optical spectroscopy and evolutionary tracks. This method of age estimation is simpler than optical spectroscopy, and is more useful for young embedded clusters where optical spectrocopy is not possible. In the youngest clusters, the protostar fraction decreases outward from the densest gas, indicating that the local star-forming age increases outward from a few 0.1 Myr in small protostar-dominated zones to a few Myr in large PMS-dominated zones.Comment: To appear in The Astrophysical Journal, Part

Mass Segregation in Young Magellanic Clouds Star Clusters: Four Clusters observed with HST

We present the results of our investigation on the phenomenon of mass segregation in young star clusters in the Magellanic Clouds. HST/WFPC2 observations on NGC 1818, NGC 2004 & NGC 2100 in the Large Magellanic Cloud and NGC 330 in the Small Magellanic Cloud have been used for the application of diagnostic tools for mass segregation: i) the radial density profiles of the clusters for various mass groups and ii) their mass functions (MFs) at various radii around their centres. All four clusters are found to be mass segregated, but each one in a different manner. Specifically not all the clusters in the sample show the same dependence of their density profiles on the selected magnitude range, with NGC 1818 giving evidence of a strong such relation and NGC 330 showing only a hint of the phenomenon. NGC 2004 did not also show any significant signature of mass segregation in its density profiles. The MFs radial dependence provides clear proof of the phenomenon for NGC 1818, NGC 2100 and NGC 2004, while for NGC 330 it gives only indications. An investigation on the constraints introduced by the application of both diagnostic tools is presented. We also discuss the problems related to the construction of a reliable MF for a cluster and their impact on the investigation of the phenomenon of mass segregation. We find that the MFs of these clusters as they were constructed with two methods, are comparable to Salpeter's IMF. A discussion is given on the dynamical status of the clusters and a test is applied on the equipartition among several mass groups in them. Both showed that the observed mass segregation in the clusters is of primordial nature.Comment: A&A Accepted, 20 pages, 9 Figures, Version with language errors and typos correcte

Quantifying the Universality of the Stellar Initial Mass Function in Old Star Clusters

We present a new technique to quantify cluster-to-cluster variations in the observed present-day stellar mass functions of a large sample of star clusters. Our method quantifies these differences as a function of both the stellar mass and the total cluster mass, and offers the advantage that it is insensitive to the precise functional form of the mass function. We applied our technique to data taken from the ACS Survey for Globular Clusters, from which we obtained completeness-corrected stellar mass functions in the mass range 0.25-0.75 M$_{\odot}$ for a sample of 27 clusters. The results of our observational analysis were then compared to Monte Carlo simulations for globular cluster evolution spanning a range of initial mass functions, total numbers of stars, concentrations, and virial radii. We show that the present-day mass functions of the clusters in our sample can be reproduced by assuming an universal initial mass function for all clusters, and that the cluster-to-cluster differences are consistent with what is expected from two-body relaxation. A more complete exploration of the initial cluster conditions will be needed in future studies to better constrain the precise functional form of the initial mass function. This study is a first step toward using our technique to constrain the dynamical histories of a large sample of old Galactic star clusters and, by extension, star formation in the early Universe.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS, proof corrections made in updated versio

A Minimum Column Density of 1 g cm^-2 for Massive Star Formation

Massive stars are very rare, but their extreme luminosities make them both the only type of young star we can observe in distant galaxies and the dominant energy sources in the universe today. They form rarely because efficient radiative cooling keeps most star-forming gas clouds close to isothermal as they collapse, and this favors fragmentation into stars <~1 Msun. Heating of a cloud by accreting low-mass stars within it can prevent fragmentation and allow formation of massive stars, but what properties a cloud must have to form massive stars, and thus where massive stars form in a galaxy, has not yet been determined. Here we show that only clouds with column densities >~ 1 g cm^-2 can avoid fragmentation and form massive stars. This threshold, and the environmental variation of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) that it implies, naturally explain the characteristic column densities of massive star clusters and the difference between the radial profiles of Halpha and UV emission in galactic disks. The existence of a threshold also implies that there should be detectable variations in the IMF with environment within the Galaxy and in the characteristic column densities of massive star clusters between galaxies, and that star formation rates in some galactic environments may have been systematically underestimated.Comment: Accepted for publication in Nature; Nature manuscript style; main text: 14 pages, 3 figures; supplementary text: 8 pages, 1 figur

Rapid star formation and global gravitational collapse

Most young stars in nearby molecular clouds have estimated ages of 1–2 Myr, suggesting that star formation is rapid. However, small numbers of stars in these regions with inferred ages of > rsim 5–10 Myr have been cited to argue that star formation is instead a slow, quasi‐static process. When considering these alternative pictures it is important to recognize that the age spread in a given star‐forming cloud is necessarily an upper limit to the time‐scales of local collapse, as not all spatially distinct regions will start contracting at precisely the same instant. Moreover, star‐forming clouds may dynamically evolve on time‐scales of a few Myr; in particular, global gravitational contraction will tend to yield increasing star formation rates with time due to generally increasing local gas densities. We show that two different numerical simulations of dynamic, flow‐driven molecular cloud formation and evolution (1) predict age spreads for the main stellar population roughly consistent with observations and (2) raise the possibility of forming small numbers of stars early in cloud evolution, before global contraction concentrates the gas and the bulk of the stellar population is produced. In general, the existence of a small number of older stars among a generally much younger population is consistent with the picture of dynamic star formation and may even provide clues to the time evolution of star‐forming clouds.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90399/1/j.1365-2966.2011.20131.x.pd

The stellar and sub-stellar IMF of simple and composite populations

The current knowledge on the stellar IMF is documented. It appears to become top-heavy when the star-formation rate density surpasses about 0.1Msun/(yr pc^3) on a pc scale and it may become increasingly bottom-heavy with increasing metallicity and in increasingly massive early-type galaxies. It declines quite steeply below about 0.07Msun with brown dwarfs (BDs) and very low mass stars having their own IMF. The most massive star of mass mmax formed in an embedded cluster with stellar mass Mecl correlates strongly with Mecl being a result of gravitation-driven but resource-limited growth and fragmentation induced starvation. There is no convincing evidence whatsoever that massive stars do form in isolation. Various methods of discretising a stellar population are introduced: optimal sampling leads to a mass distribution that perfectly represents the exact form of the desired IMF and the mmax-to-Mecl relation, while random sampling results in statistical variations of the shape of the IMF. The observed mmax-to-Mecl correlation and the small spread of IMF power-law indices together suggest that optimally sampling the IMF may be the more realistic description of star formation than random sampling from a universal IMF with a constant upper mass limit. Composite populations on galaxy scales, which are formed from many pc scale star formation events, need to be described by the integrated galactic IMF. This IGIMF varies systematically from top-light to top-heavy in dependence of galaxy type and star formation rate, with dramatic implications for theories of galaxy formation and evolution.Comment: 167 pages, 37 figures, 3 tables, published in Stellar Systems and Galactic Structure, Vol.5, Springer. This revised version is consistent with the published version and includes additional references and minor additions to the text as well as a recomputed Table 1. ISBN 978-90-481-8817-