The stellar contents and star formation in the NGC 7538 region

TL;DR

This study combines optical, infrared, and X-ray data to catalog young stellar objects in NGC 7538, analyzing their distribution, ages, masses, and star formation processes, revealing a steep mass function and potential triggered star formation by a high-mass star.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive, multi-wavelength catalog of YSOs in NGC 7538, including those without IR excess, and analyzes their properties and spatial distribution to understand star formation.

Findings

Most YSOs are young (0.1-2.5 Myr) and low-mass (0.5-3.5 M_sun).

The mass function slope is steeper than Salpeter's, indicating a different stellar mass distribution.

High-mass star IRS 6 may have triggered low-mass star formation within 3 pc.

Abstract

Deep optical photometric data on the NGC 7538 region were collected and combined with archival data sets from $Chandra$, 2MASS and {\it Spitzer} surveys in order to generate a new catalog of young stellar objects (YSOs) including those not showing IR excess emission. This new catalog is complete down to 0.8 M$_\odot$. The nature of the YSOs associated with the NGC 7538 region and their spatial distribution are used to study the star formation process and the resultant mass function (MF) in the region. Out of the 419 YSOs, $\sim$91\% have ages between 0.1 to 2.5 Myr and $\sim$86\% have masses between 0.5 to 3.5 M$_\odot$, as derived by spectral energy distribution fitting analysis. Around 24\%, 62\% and 2\% of these YSOs are classified to be the Class I, Class II and Class III sources, respectively. The X-ray activity in the Class I, Class II and Class III objects is not significantly different from each other. This result implies that the enhanced X-ray surface flux due to the increase in the rotation rate may be compensated by the decrease in the stellar surface area during the pre-main sequence evolution. Our analysis shows that the O3V type high mass star `IRS 6' might have triggered the formation of young low mass stars up to a radial distance of 3 pc. The MF shows a turn-off at around 1.5 M$_\odot$ and the value of its slope `$\Gamma$' in the mass range $1.5 <$M/M$_\odot < 6$ comes out to be $-1.76\pm0.24$, which is steeper than the Salpeter value.