• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.197-208
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• 2002

Five contemporary pre-main sequence (PMS) evolution model grids are compared with the photo-metric data for a nearly complete sample of low-mass members in NGC 2264. From amongst the grids compared, the models of Baraffe et al. (1998) prove to be the most reliable in mass-age distribution. To overcome the limited mass range of the models of Baraffe et al. we derived a simple transformation relation between the mass of a PMS star from Swenson et al. (1994) and that from Baraffe et al., and applied it to the PMS stars in NGC 2264 and the Orion nebula cluster (ONC). The resulting initial mass function (IMF) of the ONC shows that the previous interpretation of the IMF is not a real feature, but an artifact caused by the evolution models adopted. The IMFs of both clusters are in a good agreement with the IMF of the field stars in the solar neighborhood. This result supports the idea proposed by Lada, Strom, & Myers (1993) that the field stars originate from the stars that are formed in clusters and spread out as a result of dynamical dissociation. Nevertheless, the IMFs of OB associations and young open clusters show diverse behavior. For the low-mass regime, the current observations suffer from difficulties in membership assignment and sample incompleteness. From this, we conclude that a more thorough study of young open clusters is necessary in order to make any definite conclusions on the existence of a universal IMF.