Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
1995-06-06
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
19 pages, plain TeX, figures available on request, to appear in Nov.1 issue of Part I of ApJ
Scientific paper
10.1086/176395
We introduce a model Galactic field low-mass stellar population that has a proportion of binary systems as observed, with a mass ratio distribution consistent with observational constraints. The model single star and system luminosity function agrees with the nearby and the Malmquist corrected photometric luminosity function, respectively. We tabulate the model luminosity functions in the photometric V-, I- and K-bands, and in bolometric magnitudes. Unresolved binary systems are thus a natural explanation for the difference between the nearby and photometric luminosity functions. A local overdensity of faint stars needs not be postulated to account for the difference, and is very unlikely. We stress that the nearby luminosity function can only be used to weakly constrain the stellar mass function below $0.5\,M_\odot$, because of the small sample size. The photometric luminosity function can only be used to put lower limits on the stellar mass function because most binary systems are not resolved. However, taken together the nearby and photometric stellar luminosity function data do not imply a mass function with a peak at a mass of $0.2-0.3\,M_\odot$. Instead, the data are consistent with a power-law mass function between 0.08$\,M_\odot$ and $0.5\,M_\odot$. We urge researchers to only use star count data that are properly corrected for {\it all} contributions to cosmic scatter, photometric uncertainties, and unresolved binaries, and to be aware of the severe limitations of theoretical mass--luminosity relations for low mass stars, when drawing conclusions about structure in the stellar mass function.
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