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Description
We provide a new view on the Cygnus-X north complex by accessing for the first time the low mass content of young stellar populations in the region. CFHT/WIRCam camera was used to perform a deep near-IR survey of this complex, sampling stellar masses down to ~0.1M_{sun}_. Several analysis tools, including a extinction treatment developed in this work, were employed to identify and uniformly characterise a dozen unstudied young star clusters in the area. Investigation of their mass distributions in low-mass domain revealed a relatively uniform log-normal IMF with a characteristic mass of 0.32+/-0.08M_{sun}_ and mass dispersion of 0.40+/-0.06. In the high mass regime, their derived slopes showed that while the youngest clusters (age<4Myr) presented slightly shallower values with respect to the Salpeter's, our older clusters (4Myr<age<18Myr) showed IMF compliant values and a slightly denser stellar population. Although possibly evidencing a deviation from an 'universal' IMF, these results also supports a scenario where these gas dominated young clusters gradually 'build up' their IMF by accreting low-mass stars formed in their vicinity during their first ~3Myr, before the gas expulsion phase, emerging at the age of ~4Myr with a fully fledged IMF. Finally, the derived distances to these clusters confirmed the existence of at least 3 different star forming regions throughout Cygnus-X north complex, at distances of 500-900pc, 1.4-1.7kpc and 3.0kpc, and revealed evidence of a possible interaction between some of these stellar populations and the Cygnus-OB2 association.
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