The IMF of Field OB Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud

Details The IMF of Field OB Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud The IMF of Field OB Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud

2011-09-29

arxiv.org/abs/1109.6655v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Galaxy Astrophysics

5 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Four Decades of Research on Massive Stars, eds. L. Drissen, C. Robert, and N. St-Louis, ASP C

Scientific paper

The population of field OB stars are an important component of a galaxy's stellar content, representing 20-30% of the massive stars. To study this population, we have undertaken the Runaways and Isolated O Type Star Spectroscopic Survey of the SMC (RIOTS4). RIOTS4 surveys a spatially complete sample of >350 field OB stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud and will serve as a key probe of runaways, binaries, and the stellar IMF in the field massive star population. Here, we focus on the field IMF, which provides an empirical probe of the star-forming process and is a fundamental property of a stellar population. Together with photometry from the OGLE survey, RIOTS4 will yield a definitive stellar IMF for the SMC field massive star population. We present preliminary results that suggests the field IMF is much steeper, Gamma = 2.9, than the canonical stellar IMF of Gamma = 1.35. Despite the steep slope, we see no evidence of a stellar upper mass limit, up to our highest mass star of 65 solar masses.

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