A 5.2 ^ { \prime } \times 5.2 ^ { \prime } region toward the young cluster IC 348 has been imaged in the millimeter continuum at 4.0 ^ { \prime \prime } \times 4.9 ^ { \prime \prime } resolution with the OVRO interferometer to a RMS noise level of 0.75 mJy beam ^ { -1 } at 98 GHz .
The data are used to constrain the circumstellar disk masses in a cluster environment at an age of \sim 2 Myr .
The mosaic encompasses 95 known members of the IC 348 cluster with a stellar mass distribution that peaks at 0.2-0.5 M _ { \odot } .
None of the stars are detected in the millimeter continuum at an intensity level of 3 \sigma or greater .
The mean observed flux for the ensemble of 95 stars is 0.22 \pm 0.08 mJy .
Assuming a dust temperature of 20 K , a mass opacity coefficient of \kappa _ { o } = 0.02 cm ^ { 2 } g ^ { -1 } at 1300µm , and a power law index of \beta = 1 for the particle emissivity , these observations imply that the 3 \sigma upper limit to the disk mass around any individual star is 0.025 M _ { \odot } , and that the average disk mass is 0.002 \pm 0.001 M _ { \odot } .
The absence of disks with masses in excess of 0.025 M _ { \odot } in IC 348 is different at the \sim 3 \sigma confidence level from Taurus , where \sim 14 % of the stars in an optically selected sample have such disk masses .
Compared with the minimum mass needed to form the planets in our solar system ( \sim 0.01 M _ { \odot } ) , the lack of massive disks and the low mean disk mass in IC 348 suggest either that planets more massive than a few Jupiter masses will form infrequently around 0.2-0.5 M _ { \odot } stars in IC 348 , or that the process to form such planets has significantly depleted the disk of small dust grains on time scales less than the cluster age of \sim 2 Myr .