The faintest stars - The luminosity and mass functions at the bottom of the main sequence

Details The faintest stars - The luminosity and mass functions at the bottom of the main sequence The faintest stars - The luminosity and mass functions at the bottom of the main sequence

Sep 1993

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1993apj...414..279t&link_type=abstract

Astrophysical Journal, Part 1 (ISSN 0004-637X), vol. 414, no. 1, p. 279-301.

Statistics

68

Brown Dwarf Stars, Infrared Photometry, Main Sequence Stars, Star Formation, Stellar Luminosity, Stellar Mass, Astronomical Photometry, Bolometers, Extremely High Frequencies

Scientific paper

We present IR K-band photometry of complete samples of VLM candidates constructed from IIIaF and IVN plates in 10 fields taken as part of the POSSII and UKSRC surveys. Using the I-K colors constructed for these stars we estimate a bolometric luminosity function which extends to M(Bol) = 13.75. We find significant evidence for a luminosity function decreasing toward these luminosities. We also find that our results are consistent with those of studies based on the Nearby Star sample, when those data are presented as a bolometric luminosity function. We convert our observed luminosity function into a mass function, which extends with reasonable statistics to 0.08 solar masses - the H-burning minimum mass. We find significant evidence for features in the mass function at these masses. Specifically, the mass function 'turns over' at 0.25 solar mass, goes through a local minimum at about 0.15 solar mass, and may increase again below 0.1 solar mass - none of these features are predicted by any of the current theories of star formation. Lastly, the mass density we observe just above the H-burning minimum mass makes it difficult to envisage brown dwarfs contributing significant quantities of missing mass without invoking either a mass function in this region significantly steeper than that seen for main-sequence stars, or an extremely low cutoff mass to the mass function.

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