NGC 7538 Young Stellar Clusters : Study of Substellar Mass Function and a Morphological Analysis.

We present a deep near-infrared (NIR) study of the rich stellar cluster regions associated with the high-luminosity IRS 1-3 and IRS 9 infrared sources in the NGC 7538 star-forming region, which is part of the Cas OB2 complex at a distance of 2.65 kpc. NIR data from Subaru 8.2 m telescope - the deepest till date for this region - reveals stellar population down to the hydrogen-burning / brown-dwarf limit and lower. This stellar population is used to construct the mass function, whose shape - especially in the low-mass regime - is important for the understanding of star formation theories. In addition we also carry out a morphological analysis of the cluster regions using low-frequency radio continuum observations from GMRT and H13CO+ (J=1-0) molecular line observations from Nobeyama radio telescope to examine the distribution / characteristics of the ionized and dense gas, respectively.