The arches cluster mass function

We have analyzed H- and K-s -band images of the Arches cluster obtained using the NIRC2 instrument on Keck with the laser guide star adaptive optics (LGS AO) system. With the help of the LGS AO system, we were able to obtain the deepest ever photometry for this cluster and its neighborhood and derive the background-subtracted present-day mass function down to 1.3 M-circle dot for the 5'' - 9'' annulus of the cluster. We find that the previously reported turnover at 6 M-circle dot is simply due to a local bump in the mass function (MF), and that the MF continues to increase down to our 50% completeness limit (1.3 M-circle dot) with a power-law exponent of Gamma = -0.91 for the mass range of 1.3 < M/ M-circle dot < 50. Our numerical calculations for the evolution of the Arches cluster show that the Gamma-values for our annulus increase by 0.1-0.2 during the lifetime of the cluster and thus suggest that the Arches cluster initially had Gamma of -1.0 to 1.1, which is only slightly shallower than the Salpeter value.