Department of Physics & Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University 3400 N Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21218
Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str.2, 85748 Garching bei Munchen - Germany
Affiliated with the Astrophysics Division, Space Science Department of the European Space Agency.
Astro-ph/9911524
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ABSTRACT |
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We report the result of a study in which we have used very deep broadband V and I WFPC2 images of the R136 cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud from the HST archive, to sample the luminosity function below the detection limit of 2.8 Mo previously reached. In these new deeper images, we detect stars down to a limiting magnitude of m_F555W = 24.7 ( ~ 1 magnitude deeper than previous works), and identify a population of red stars evenly distributed in the surrounding of the R136 cluster. A comparison of our color-magnitude diagram with recently computed evolutionary tracks indicates that these red objects are pre-main sequence stars in the mass range 0.6 - 3 Mo. We construct the initial mass function (IMF) in the 1.35 - 6.5 Mo range and find that, after correcting for incompleteness, the IMF shows a definite flattening below ~ 2 Mo. We discuss the implications of this result for the R136 cluster and for our understanding of starburst galaxies formation and evolution in general. |
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Postscript |
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FIGURE (.ps) |
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