Search for sub-stellar companions to young brown dwarfs in the Chamaeleon I dark cloud

Details Search for sub-stellar companions to young brown dwarfs in the Chamaeleon I dark cloud Search for sub-stellar companions to young brown dwarfs in the Chamaeleon I dark cloud

Jul 2000

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000hst..prop.8716n&link_type=abstract

HST Proposal ID #8716

Computer Science

Hst Proposal Id #8716 Star Formation

Scientific paper

We have discovered 12 very low-mass dwarfs in the Chamaeleon I dark cloud, a site of on-going star formation, all showing H-alpha emission with spectral types from M6 to M8. We could obtain medium-resolution spectra for the eight brightest objects, detected the lithium absorption line, and found the radial velocity to be consistent with kinematic membership to the Cha I dark cloud. When placed on an H-R diagram and compared with theoretical evolutionary tracks and isochrones, we find a range of masses between 0.04 and 0.1 M_sol and ages from 1 to 10 Myrs. Because the possibly unresolved systems are already sub-stellar or nearly sub-stellar, any companion would be clearly sub-stellar, too. We propose to use HST/WFPC2 to observe these young, very low-mass dwarfs in order to search for close, faint companions. At an age of a few Myrs, any sub-stellar companion {brown dwarf or giant planet} should still be relatively bright and self-luminous {powered by on-going accretion and/or contraction}, making its detection much easier than around older stars in the solar neigborhood. With the exposure times proposed, we can detect companions down to 5 M_jup at separations as close as 0.3" from the targets. The detection of young, sub-stellar companions would have important implication on our understanding of the formation and frequency of planets and brown dwarfs.

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