IMF FROM INFRARED PHOTOMETRY OF YOUNG STELLAR CLUSTERS IN TAURUS-AURIGA AND ORION

We applied the extinction-disk-principal vectors approach to near infrared photometric data of the Taurus-Auriga region and Orion Nebula young stellar clusters. By assuming that the cluster age is represented by the median value of the age distribution we are able to derive the distribution of stellar masses. We showed that the resulting initial mass function (IMF) for these two young stellar clusters compares remarkably well and might be a robust representation of the IMF obtained by spectroscopic or photometric methods. The method also yields the extinction and disk contribution for each star. The overall extinction distribution for the Orion cluster is analyzed and compares well with previous work. The frequency of T Tauri stars with disks is about 50%.