Deep ACS Imaging in the Globular Cluster NGC 6397: The Cluster Color Magnitude Diagram and Luminosity Function

TL;DR

This study uses deep HST imaging to produce a detailed, clean color-magnitude diagram of NGC 6397, revealing new features of its stellar populations, including the main sequence termination, white dwarf cooling sequence, and the cluster's luminosity and mass functions.

Contribution

It provides the deepest CMD of NGC 6397 with proper motion cleaning, revealing new stellar features and deriving the cluster's luminosity and mass functions, compared with models and simulations.

Findings

Main sequence terminates near hydrogen-burning limit

White dwarf cooling sequence shows a blue turn and truncation

Luminosity and mass functions fit with flat power-law or lognormal models

Abstract

We present the CMD from deep HST imaging in the globular cluster NGC 6397. The ACS was used for 126 orbits to image a single field in two colors (F814W, F606W) 5 arcmin SE of the cluster center. The field observed overlaps that of archival WFPC2 data from 1994 and 1997 which were used to proper motion (PM) clean the data. Applying the PM corrections produces a remarkably clean CMD which reveals a number of features never seen before in a globular cluster CMD. In our field, the main sequence stars appeared to terminate close to the location in the CMD of the hydrogen-burning limit predicted by two independent sets of stellar evolution models. The faintest observed main sequence stars are about a magnitude fainter than the least luminous metal-poor field halo stars known, suggesting that the lowest luminosity halo stars still await discovery. At the bright end the data extend beyond the main sequence turnoff to well up the giant branch. A populous white dwarf cooling sequence is also seen in the cluster CMD. The most dramatic features of the cooling sequence are its turn to the blue at faint magnitudes as well as an apparent truncation near F814W = 28. The cluster luminosity and mass functions were derived, stretching from the turn off down to the hydrogen-burning limit. It was well modeled with either a very flat power-law or a lognormal function. In order to interpret these fits more fully we compared them with similar functions in the cluster core and with a full N-body model of NGC 6397 finding satisfactory agreement between the model predictions and the data. This exercise demonstrates the important role and the effect that dynamics has played in altering the cluster IMF.