A Novel Survey for Young Substellar Objects with the W-band Filter. VI. Spectroscopic Census of Substellar Members and the IMF of the σ Orionis Cluster

Belinda Damian, Jessy Jose, Beth Biller, Gregory J. Herczeg, Loïc Albert, Katelyn Allers, Zhoujian Zhang, Michael C. Liu, Sophie Dubber, K. Paul, Wen Ping Chen, Bhavana Lalchand, Tanvi Sharma, Yumiko Oasa

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

Low-mass stars and substellar objects are essential in tracing the initial mass function (IMF). We study the nearby young σ Orionis cluster (d ∼ 408 pc, age ∼ 1.8 Myr) using deep near-infrared (NIR) photometric data in the J, W, and H bands from WIRCam on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. We use the water absorption feature to select brown dwarfs photometrically and confirm their nature spectroscopically with IRTF-SpeX. Additionally we select candidate low-mass stars for spectroscopy and analyze their membership and those of literature sources using astrometry from Gaia DR3. We obtain NIR spectra for 28 very-low-mass stars and brown dwarfs and estimate their spectral type between M3 and M8.5 (masses ranging between 0.3 and 0.01 M ). Apart from these, we also identify five new planetary-mass candidates which require further spectroscopic confirmation of youth. We compile a comprehensive catalog of 170 spectroscopically confirmed members in the central region of the cluster, for a wide mass range of ∼19-0.004 M . We estimate the star-to-brown-dwarf ratio to be ∼4, within the range reported for other nearby star-forming regions. With the updated catalog of members we trace the IMF down to 4 M Jup and we find that a two-segment power law fits the substellar IMF better than a log-normal distribution.

Original languageEnglish
Article number139
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume951
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jul 2023

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A Novel Survey for Young Substellar Objects with the W-band Filter. VI. Spectroscopic Census of Substellar Members and the IMF of the σ Orionis Cluster'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this