Search for Brown Dwarfs in IC 1396 with Subaru HSC: Interpreting the Impact of Environmental Factors on Sub-stellar Population

Abstract

Young stellar clusters are predominantly the hub of star formation and hence, ideal to perform comprehensive studies over the least explored sub-stellar regime. Various unanswered questions like the mass distribution in brown dwarf regime and the effect of diverse cluster environment on brown dwarf formation efficiency still plague the scientific community. The nearby young cluster, IC 1396 with its feedback-driven environment, is ideal to conduct such study. In this paper we adopt a multi-wavelength approach, using deep Subaru HSC, Gaia DR3, Pan-STARRS, UKIDSS/2MASS photometry and machine learning techniques to identify the cluster members complete down to ∼ 0.03 M⊙ in the central 22′ area of IC 1396. We identify 458 cluster members including 62 brown dwarfs which are used to determine mass distribution in the region. We obtain a star-to-brown dwarf ratio of ∼ 6 for a stellar mass range 0.03 – 1 M⊙ in the studied cluster. The brown dwarf fraction is observed to increase across the cluster as radial distance from the central OB-stars increases. This study also compiles 15 young stellar clusters to check the variation of star-to-brown dwarf ratio relative to stellar density and UV flux ranging within 4-2500 stars pc−2 and 0.7-7.3 G0 respectively. The brown dwarf fraction is observed to increase with stellar density but the results about the influence of incident UV flux are inconclusive within this range. This is the deepest study of IC 1396 as of yet and it will pave the way to understand various aspects of brown dwarfs using spectroscopic observations in future.