Young Stellar Clusters Containing Massive Young Stellar Objects in the VVV Survey

TL;DR

This study investigates eight young stellar clusters in the VVV survey, analyzing their properties and young stellar objects, revealing most YSOs are massive and identifying new YSO candidates with variability characteristics.

Contribution

It combines spectroscopic and photometric data to characterize cluster parameters and identifies new massive young stellar object candidates using color-color cuts and variability analysis.

Findings

All clusters are low to intermediate mass (110-1800 Mo).

Most spectroscopically confirmed YSOs are massive (>8 Mo).

57% of YSO candidates show low-amplitude variability.

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to study the connection of global properties of eight young stellar clusters projected in the Vista Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) ESO Large Public Survey disk area and their young stellar object population. The analysis in based on the combination of spectroscopic parallax-based reddening and distance determinations with main sequence and pre-main sequence ishochrone fitting to determine the basic parameters (reddening, age, distance) of the sample clusters. The lower mass limit estimations show that all clusters are low or intermediate mass (between 110 and 1800 Mo), the slope Gamma of the obtained present-day mass functions of the clusters is close to the Kroupa initial mass function. On the other hand, the young stellar objects in the surrounding cluster's fields are classified by low resolution spectra, spectral energy distribution fit with theoretical predictions, and variability, taking advantage of multi-epoch VVV observations. All spectroscopically confirmed young stellar objects (except one) are found to be massive (more than 8 Mo). Using VVV and GLIMPSE color-color cuts we have selected a large number of new young stellar object candidates, which are checked for variability and 57% are found to show at least low-amplitude variations. In few cases it was possible to distinguish between YSO and AGB classification on the basis of the light curves.