  We have analyzed H and K_s-band images of the Arches cluster obtained using
the NIRC2 instrument on Keck with the laser guide star adaptive optics (LGS AO)
system. With the help of the LGS AO system, we were able to obtain the deepest
ever photometry for this cluster and its neighborhood, and derive the
background-subtracted present-day mass function (PDMF) down to 1.3 Msun for the
5 arcsec-9 arcsec annulus of the cluster. We find that the previously reported
turnover at 6 Msun is simply due to a local bump in the mass function (MF), and
that the MF continues to increase down to our 50 % completeness limit (1.3
Msun) with a power-law exponent of Gamma = -0.91 for the mass range of 1.3 <
M/Msun < 50. Our numerical calculations for the evolution of the Arches cluster
show that the Gamma values for our annulus increase by 0.1-0.2 during the
lifetime of the cluster, and thus suggest that the Arches cluster initially had
Gamma of -1.0 ~ -1.1, which is only slightly shallower than the Salpeter value.
