Pushing the limits of future IMF research in the Milky Way with the ELT

Supervisor: Kieran Leschinski

Contact information: kieran.leschinski@univie.ac.at

Expected duration: 9 months

Project description & Goals:

The initial mass function is one of the most important, yet also least understood, aspects of the whole star formation process. Multiple astronomical careers have been defined by characterising the shape of IMF, most notably Salpeter, Kroupa, Chabrier. However all functional descriptions of the IMF are empirical fits based on observations data. Simply put, counting stars. The two competing descriptions (Kroupa's power-law vs Chabrier's Log-Normal) imply different underlying physical star formation processes. Thus it is a major goal of the star formation community to determine which of the two descriptions is the "real" one. The current generations of 8m telescopes allow deep observations of star clusters within the solar neighbourhood, however the true nature of the IMF in completely different environments (e.g. galacic centre) remains a mystery. The european extremely large telescope (ELT) will change this. The ELT will have 5x the spatial resolution and 25x the collecting area of the VLT. This massive leap in observational capabilities will allow astronomers to observe almost all stars in the faintest and most tightly packed cores of the Milky Way's open star cluster. This project aims to generate realistic estimates for how completely the IMF of all open star clusters in the Milky Way will be able to be determined with the ELT. The primary goal is to create a catalogue of "best case" observable parameters relevant to IMF studies for all Milky Way open cluster. E.g. halo/core star density, expected number of stars per mass bin, lowest detectable mass bin, crowding radius per mass bin, etc. The secondary goal is to simulate observations of these clusters with MICADO at the ELT, in order to determine more realistic values for these categories. The ultimate goal of this project is to create a "Handbook of IMF observation targets" for the ELT era, which will provide the IMF community with an efficient roadmap for finally deciphering the IMF once the ELT is online in 2027.

Working plan & Milestones (including final thesis):

  1. Literature review on state of affairs of Milky Way IMF studies
  2. Clean MWSC open cluster catalogue for ELT observations
  3. Define and calculate "ideal case" parameter values
  4. Simulate observations of all star clusters automatically with python
  5. Extract star catalogues from simulated observations
  6. Cross-match observed catalogues with input catalogues
  7. Compare parameter values of "ideal case" vs "simulated observations"
  8. Write up thesis and submit parameter values to the "Handbook of IMF targets"

Requirements / special skills:

Basic python coding skills - Basic understanding of star formation, open clusters, the initial mass function - Basic understanding of the optical limitations of telescope observations (Plate scale, PSFs, etc)

References:

[1] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020A%26A...639A.120L/abstract 

[2] https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/mwsc.html

[3] https://scopesim.readthedocs.io/en/latest/