Infrared L Band Observations of the Trapezium Cluster: A Census of Circumstellar Disks and Candidate Protostars

Abstract

We report the results of a sensitive near-infrared JHKL imaging survey of the Trapezium cluster in Orion. We use the JHKL colors to obtain a census of infrared excess stars in the cluster. Of (391) stars brighter than 12th magnitude in the K and L bands, 80 +/- 7% are found to exhibit detectable infrared excess on the J-H, K-L color-color diagram. Examination of a subsample of 285 of these stars with published spectral types yields a slightly higher infrared excess fraction of 85%. We find that 97% of the optical proplyds in the cluster exhibit excess in the JHKL color-color diagram indicating that the most likely origin of the observed infrared excesses is from circumstellar disks. We interpret these results to indicate that the fraction of stars in the cluster with circumstellar disks is between 80-85%. Moreover, we find that the probability of finding an infrared excess/protoplanetary disk around a star is independent of stellar mass over essentially the entire range of the stellar mass function down to the hydrogen burning limit. We identify 78 stars in our sample characterized by K-L colors suggestive of deeply embedded protostellar objects. If even a modest fraction fraction (i.e., ~ 50%) of these objects are protostars, then star formation could be continuing in the molecular ridge at a rate comparable to that which produced the foreground Trapezium cluster.