The Pleiades mass function: Models versus observations

Two stellar-dynamical models of binary-rich embedded proto-Orion-Nebula-type clusters that evolve to Pleiades-like clusters are studied with an emphasis on comparing the stellar mass function with observational constraints. By the age of the Pleiades (about 100 Myr) both models show a similar degree of mass segregation which also agrees with observational constraints. This thus indicates that the Pleiades is well relaxed and that it is suffering from severe amnesia. It is found that the initial mass function (IMF) must have been indistinguishable from the standard or Galactic-field IMF for stars with mass m ≲ 2 M_⊙, provided the Pleiades precursor had a central density of about 10^4.8 stars/pc³. A denser model with 10^5.8 stars/pc³ also leads to reasonable agreement with observational constraints, but owing to the shorter relaxation time of the embedded cluster it evolves through energy equipartition to a mass-segregated condition just prior to residual-gas expulsion. This model consequently preferentially loses low-mass stars and brown dwarfs (BDs), but the effect is not very pronounced. The empirical data indicate that the Pleiades IMF may have been steeper than the Salpeter for stars with m⪆ 2 M_⊙.