Abstract. We analyze a XMM-Newton X-ray imaging observation of the very young stellar cluster IC 348 with an observing time of 12 h and a corresponding total (all detector) MOS-equivalent exposure time of 207 ks. Our observation is strongly affected by a very intense solar particle flare, due to which only the first half of the exposure time can be used for scientific analysis. We compare the X-ray sources seen by XMM-Newton with those found in our previous Chandra study of IC 348 and find that XMM-Newton reveals 71 new X-ray sources, most of which are located outside the field-of-view of the Chandra observation. 20 of these new X-ray sources can be identified with known cluster members, and 19 sources are likely to be new low-mass members of the cluster. The lightcurves of the XMM-Newton sources show at most moderate levels of variability, but no large flares. We compare the spectral fitting results for 10 stars for which we have good spectra from both Chandra and XMM-Newton, and find good agreement in the fitted plasma temperatures, but a systematic difference in the fitted values of the hydrogen column density (extinction). We finally discuss the X-ray properties of the optically bright B1 star o Per and the X-ray detections among the deeply embedded young stellar objects to the south of the optical cluster center (including HH 211-mm), and find that none of the 23 spectroscopically identified brown dwarfs in IC 348 is detected in our XMM-Newton data.
Key words.Galaxy: open clusters and associations: individual: IC 348 -stars: formation -stars: coronaestars: low-mass, brown dwarfs -stars: pre-main sequence -X-rays: stars
IntroductionIC 348 is a very young stellar cluster in the Perseus molecular cloud complex, associated with the Per OB2 association and located at a distance of about 310 pc (cf. Herbig 1998). The cluster is exceptionally well investigated in optical and infrared wavelengths. Several studies have identified cluster members by extensive spectroscopy and photometry at optical and IR wavelengths (cf. Herbig 1998;Lada & Lada 1995;Luhman et al. 1998;Luhman 1999) or narrow-band photometry (Najita et al. 2000). Studies of the infrared luminosity function have provided information on the stellar and sub-stellar mass function Muench et al. 2003;Preibisch et al. 2003). Recently, Luhman et al. (2003) presented a new census of the stellar and substellar members of IC 348. From spectroscopy of candidate cluster members they identified numerous new members, including several brown dwarfs. Their final, extinction-limited (A V ≤ 4 mag) sample of members is unbiased in mass, nearly complete down to masses of M ≥ 0.03 M , and contains 288 spectroscopically identified cluster members, including 23 brown dwarfs.The basic properties of IC 348 can be summarized as follows: the mean age of the cluster members is ∼2 Myr and most of the stars exhibit relatively low extinction (A V < ∼ 4 mag). The majority of the cluster members is in the T Tauri stage of premain sequence evolution, and more than 50 stars can be class...