Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2009 / iii / Paper 65 / 3

Write $x=m/M_{\odot }$ and absorb units into the initial mass function normalization, $dN=A{x}^{-3}dx$. The specified mass-luminosity relation is $L(x)=L_{\odot }{x}^3$, normalized to the Sun. Therefore the total stellar mass and luminosity areThe unknown normalization cancels. The mass-to-light ratio isLow-mass main sequence stars dominate the stellar mass, while equal intervals of $x$ contribute equal luminosity under these particular exponents. More generally the mass-to-light ratio of a power-law stellar population with these exponents on $a<x<b$ is $(M_{\odot }/L_{\odot })/(ab)$.

The result is in the broad range expected for an old, relatively faint stellar population, but is high compared with many observed stellar mass-to-light ratios of a few solar units in optical bands. The comparison must specify the band and whether the measured mass includes dark matter: for example, early-type galaxy dynamical measurements find an $I$-band normalization near $3.8$ solar units at velocity dispersion $200\mathrm{km}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$, including a contribution from dark matter. That is an illustrative observational comparison, not a direct equality with a bolometric stellar calculation.

For an old stellar population, an upper surviving main sequence mass near $M_{\odot }$ is reasonable because more massive stars have shorter lifetimes; low-mass main sequence stars also contain much of the surviving stellar mass. However, red giants and other evolved stars can contribute a large fraction of the light despite their small numbers, so omitting them generally makes this calculated mass-to-light ratio too large. Omitting stellar remnants has the opposite effect on the inferred mass, and a single cubic mass-luminosity relation is only approximate across the stated range. Finally, a single $m^{-3}$ initial mass function down to $0.1M_{\odot }$ is steeper and more low-mass-heavy than commonly adopted distributions, which flatten at low mass. Ten solar units is a useful toy-model estimate, not a precision stellar-population prediction.

Let the extrapolated lower limit be $a=m_{\min }/M_{\odot }$ and keep the upper surviving limit at $x=1$. If the same cubic mass-luminosity relation is formally continued, the initial mass function givesMatching $1000$ therefore requires a planetary-scale cutoffThe mass per logarithmic interval is proportional to $m^{-1}$ for this initial mass function, so most of the added mass is near the cutoff. Substellar objects do not actually obey the unevolved cubic mass-luminosity relation: they cool, and their luminosity depends strongly on age. If they are approximated as entirely dark while only the original $0.1$--$1M_{\odot }$ stars supply light, then ${{\rm Y}}_{\ast }=(1/a-1)/0.9$ instead, giving $a=1/901\simeq 1.11\times 10^{-3}$. Both conventions lead to the same order-of-magnitude conclusion; the exact $10^{-3}$ result uses the question's formal power-law extrapolation.

Objects near the derived cutoff are too faint for their absence in ordinary star counts alone to exclude a massive dark matter halo. The decisive test is gravitational microlensing: compact objects passing in front of background stars produce transient magnification even if they emit no detectable light. For a lens at distance $D_l$ and a source at $D_s$, the physical Einstein radius and event timescale areFor $D_l=10\mathrm{kpc}$, $D_s=50\mathrm{kpc}$ and $v_{\perp }=200\mathrm{km}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$, a $10^{-3}{M}_{\odot }$ lens gives $t_E\simeq 2.2$ days, within the regime tested by suitably sampled gravitational microlensing surveys. The microlensing optical depth isso at fixed compact-object mass density it is independent of the individual lens mass: reducing individual mass changes the event durations rather than hiding the total lensing probability.

EROS observations of the Magellanic Clouds found far fewer candidate events than a halo dominated by compact objects would predict and excluded such objects as the principal Galactic halo component over $6\times 10^{-8}<m/M_{\odot }<15$, under their tested halo models. Their often-quoted eight-percent bound is specifically near $0.4M_{\odot }$, not a uniform bound at every lens mass. A halo dominated by the approximately Jupiter-mass objects needed here is incompatible with those microlensing constraints. Deep optical and infrared counts also restrict a large population of luminous low-mass stars and brown dwarfs, while the cosmic baryon fraction provides a separate constraint on explaining all cosmological dark matter with baryonic objects.

First specify the dynamical estimate: assume an initially isolated virialized system, stars of different masses well mixed with the same velocity distribution, and ejecta escaping rapidly compared with a stellar crossing time, without imparting kicks to surviving stars. If $f$ is the retained stellar mass fraction, the original virial theorem gives $2T+W=0$, where $T$ is kinetic energy and $W<0$ is Newtonian gravitational potential energy. Immediately after loss, positions and velocities are unchanged, soThus impulsive disruption by stellar mass loss makes the energy of the whole remaining system nonnegative when at least half the initial mass is removed.

For the power-law initial mass function, the fraction removed is a mass fraction, not a number fraction:For integer slopes, $F(0)\simeq 0.990$, $F(1)\simeq 0.901$, $F(2)=0.333$, and $F(3)\simeq 0.009$. Interpolating between $\alpha =1$ and $2$ puts the threshold around $1.7$--$1.8$. Solving $F=1/2$ more accurately givesThe rearranged equation has a spurious root at $\alpha =2$ introduced when the vanishing denominator was cleared; the logarithmic limit $F(2)=1/3$ excludes it. Increasing $\alpha$ shifts the mass distribution towards lower masses, so the top-heavy side, $\alpha <{\alpha }_{\mathrm{crit}}$, has nonnegative remnant energy in the impulsive model; equality is marginal. One can see strict monotonicity from the covariance obtained by differentiating $F$: $F^{\prime }=-\mathrm{Cov}(1_{x>10},\ln x)<0$ under the normalized mass-weighted distribution.

The initial mass function alone does not guarantee complete disruption. If losses occur slowly, the adiabatic mass-loss expansion law gives expansion rather than the instantaneous half-mass threshold, and positive total energy can still leave a bound core after selective escape. The stated value is therefore the conventional global impulsive estimate, with no external confining Newtonian gravitational potential.