Related papers: Substellar Objects in Nearby Young Clusters VII: T…
The dominant formation mechanism of brown dwarfs and planetary mass objects in star-forming regions is presently uncertain. Do they form like stars, via the collapse and fragmentation of cores in Giant Molecular clouds, or do they form like…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is commonly interpreted to be a scale-invariant probability density distribution function (PDF) such that many small clusters yield the same IMF as one massive cluster of the same combined number of…
We report on a sensitive infrared search for disks around isolated young planetary-mass objects (PMOs) in the NGC1333 cluster, by stacking 70 Spitzer/IRAC frames at 3.6 and 4.5$\,\mu m$. Our co-added images go >2.3 mag deeper than…
The discovery and characterization of free-floating planetary-mass objects (FFPMOs) is fundamental to our understanding of star and planet formation. Here we report results from an extremely deep spectroscopic survey of the young star…
We review recent determinations of the present day and initial mass functions in various components of the Galaxy, disk, spheroid, young and globular clusters. As a general feature, the IMF is well described by a power-law form for $m\ga 1…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a key property of stellar populations. There is growing evidence that the classical star-formation mechanism by the direct cloud fragmentation process has difficulties reproducing the observed…
We combine results from imaging searches for substellar objects in the sigma Orionis cluster and follow-up photometric and spectroscopic observations to derive a census of the brown dwarf population in a region of 847 arcmin^2. We identify…
SONYC, short for "Substellar Objects in Nearby Young Clusters", is a survey program to provide a census of the substellar population in nearby star forming regions. We have conducted deep optical and near-infrared photometry in five young…
Within the SONYC - Substellar Objects in Nearby Young Clusters - survey, we investigate the frequency of free-floating planetary-mass objects (planemos) in the young cluster NGC1333. Building upon our extensive previous work, we present…
The distribution of stellar masses that form in one star-formation event in a given volume of space is called the initial mass function (IMF). The IMF has been estimated from low-mass brown dwarfs to very massive stars. Combining IMF…
The measured star-formation rates (SFRs) of galaxies comprise an important constraint on galaxy evolution and also on their cosmological boundary conditions. Any available tracer of the SFR depends on the shape of the mass-distribution of…
It has been shown recently that the dynamical V-band mass-to-light ratios of compact stellar systems with masses from 10^6 to 10^8 Solar masses are not consistent with the predictions from simple stellar population (SSP) models. Top-heavy…
We exploit the ability of the Hubble Space Telescope to probe near infrared water absorption present in the atmosphere of low-mass stars, brown dwarfs and planetary mass objects to create a very pure sample of Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC)…
Young stellar clusters are predominantly the hub of star formation and hence, ideal to perform comprehensive studies over the least explored sub-stellar regime. Various unanswered questions like the mass distribution in brown dwarf regime…
The substellar initial mass function (IMF) and the formation mechanisms of brown dwarfs (BDs) remain key open questions in star formation theory. IMF characterization in a large number of star-forming regions (SFRs) is essential for…
We demonstrate the feasibility of detecting directly low mass stars in unresolved super-star clusters with ages < 10 Myr using near-infrared spectroscopy at modest resolution (R ~ 1000). Such measurements could constrain the ratio of high…
We investigate the mass function in the substellar domain down to a few Jupiter masses in the young sigma Orionis open cluster (3+/-2 Ma, d = 360^+70_-60 pc). We have performed a deep IJ-band search, covering an area of 790 arcmin^2 close…
We have obtained images of the Trapezium Cluster (140" x 140"; 0.3 pc x 0.3 pc) with the Hubble Space Telescope Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS). Combining these data with new ground-based K-band spectra (R=800)…
We present the results of a HST WFPC2 search for substellar companions to members of the star-forming cluster IC 348. The detection limits for companions to low-mass stars and brown dwarfs in the PC images are dm_791=0, 2.5, and 5.5 at…
We present a uniform analysis of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) from integrated light spectroscopy of 15 compact stellar systems (11 globular clusters in M31 and 4 ultra compact dwarfs in the Virgo cluster, UCDs) and two brightest…