A Sensitive Search for Variability in Late L dwarfs: the Quest for Weather

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Scientific paper

The near-infrared colors of L dwarfs cannot be explained without invoking the presence of clouds in their atmospheres. Throughout the L spectral sequence optical and infrared spectra show that important atomice and molecular species begin to disappear as major opacity sources as they condense into other, more complex forms. Such formation of condensate clouds also explains the increasingly red J-K colors of L dwarfs (~1.2 at early-L and up to 2.5 for late-L. The colors of T dwarfs, however, can only be explained if these condensate clouds are not present. Therefore, in the late L dwarf spectral range the cloud deck must begin its metamorphosis, and any azimuthal differences in the structure of the cloud decks would lead to photometric modulations as the brown dwarfs rotate. Various earlier studies have searched for this variability in the optical and near-infrared, but the low photometric accuracy of these studies has resulted in mixed results, without compelling evidence for any particular model of cloud dissipation. In this proposal we wish to re-explore this issue using the recently demonstrated milli-magnitude photometric accuracy of IRAC.

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