Seminario: Víctor Almendros Abad (CENTRA, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa; European Southern Observatory), ore 15

Speaker: Víctor Almendros Abad (CENTRA, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa; European Southern Observatory)

Title: Milky Way’s young substellar population

indirizzo google meet: https://meet.google.com/sxz-cctp-tsc

Abstract:
Young clusters and star forming regions are home to a large number of substellar objects with masses below the hydrogen-burning limit at ~0.075 MSun. Most of our knowledge about their populations comes from nearby regions (d < 400 pc), where we find consistent formation rates of 2-5 young brown dwarfs per 10 newborn stars. Brown dwarf theories, on the other hand, predict that high gas or stellar densities, as well as the presence of massive OB stars, may be factors that boost the incidence of newly formed brown dwarfs with respect to stars. The next frontier in substellar studies, therefore, is the exploration of massive star clusters, characterized by significantly different star-forming environments than those found in our immediate vicinity. In this contribution I will present our deep NIR imaging using the AO-supported instrument HAWK-I/VLT in Galactic massive clusters RCW 38 and NGC 2244, complemented by the spectroscopic follow-up using KMOS/VLT. We report the most complete substellar IMFs in the two clusters, along with the first bona-fide brown dwarfs beyond 1 kpc, providing an ideal dataset for a comparison with nearby star forming regions. Finally, I will present our future plans with two approved JWST programs, which include the first substellar IMF in a starburst cluster, and spectroscopic confirmation of first single Jupiter-mass objects in a nearby star forming region.