Mapping the Shores of the Brown Dwarf Desert I.: Upper Scorpius

Details Mapping the Shores of the Brown Dwarf Desert I.: Upper Scorpius Mapping the Shores of the Brown Dwarf Desert I.: Upper Scorpius

2008-01-15

arxiv.org/abs/0801.2387v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Accepted to ApJ; 23 pages, 7 figures, 9 tables in emulateapj format

Scientific paper

10.1086/587435

We present the results of a survey for stellar and substellar companions to 82 young stars in the nearby OB association Upper Scorpius. This survey used nonredundant aperture-mask interferometry to achieve typical contrast limits of DeltaK~5-6 at the diffraction limit, revealing 12 new binary companions that lay below the detection limits of traditional high-resolution imaging; we also summarize a complementary snapshot imaging survey that discovered 7 directly resolved companions. The overall frequency of binary companions (~35+5/-4% at separations of 6-435 AU) appears to be equivalent to field stars of similar mass, but companions could be more common among lower-mass stars than for the field. The companion mass function has statistically significant differences compared to several suggested mass functions for the field, and we suggest an alternate log-normal parameterization of the mass-function. Our survey limits encompass the entire brown dwarf mass range, but we only detected a single companion that might be a brown dwarf; this deficit resembles the so-called ``brown dwarf desert'' that has been observed by radial-velocity planet searches. Finally, our survey's deep detection limits extend into the top of the planetary mass function, reaching 8-12 MJup for half of our sample. We have not identified any planetary companions at high confidence (>99.5%), but we have identified four candidate companions at lower confidence (>97.5%) that merit additional followup to confirm or disprove their existence.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Mapping the Shores of the Brown Dwarf Desert I.: Upper Scorpius does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Mapping the Shores of the Brown Dwarf Desert I.: Upper Scorpius, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Mapping the Shores of the Brown Dwarf Desert I.: Upper Scorpius will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-159324