The Minimum Mass of Rotating Main Sequence Stars and its Impact on the Nature of Extended Main Sequence Turnoffs in Intermediate-Age Star Clusters in the Magellanic Clouds

TL;DR

This study investigates the role of stellar rotation and age spread in causing extended main sequence turn-offs in Magellanic Cloud star clusters, finding that rotation alone cannot explain the observed features.

Contribution

It identifies a minimum stellar mass below which rotation effects are negligible, challenging the rotation-only explanation for eMSTOs in intermediate-age clusters.

Findings

The kink in the main sequence occurs at 1.45 solar masses.

Stars below this mass are in a region with wider eMSTOs.

Rotation alone cannot account for the extent of eMSTOs.

Abstract

Extended main sequence turn-offs (eMSTOs) are a common feature in color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of young and intermediate-age star clusters in the Magellanic Clouds. The nature of eMSTOs is still debated. The most popular scenarios are extended star formation and ranges of stellar rotation rates. Here we study implications of a kink feature in the main sequence (MS) of young star clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). This kink shows up very clearly in new \emph{Hubble Space Telescope} observations of the 700-Myr-old cluster NGC 1831, and is located below the region in the CMD where multiple or wide MSes, which are known to occur in young clusters and thought to be due to varying rotation rates, merge together into a single MS. The kink occurs at an initial stellar mass of $1.45 \pm 0.02\;M_{\odot}$; we posit that it represents a lower limit to the mass below which the effects of rotation on the energy output of stars are rendered negligible at the metallicity of these clusters. Evaluating the positions of stars with this initial mass in CMDs of massive LMC star clusters with ages of $\sim\,$1.7 Gyr that feature wide eMSTOs, we find that such stars are located in a region where the eMSTO is already significantly wider than the MS below it. This strongly suggests that stellar rotation \emph{cannot} fully explain the wide extent of eMSTOs in massive intermediate-age clusters in the Magellanic Clouds. A distribution of stellar ages still seems necessary to explain the eMSTO phenomenon.