An Efficient Survey for Faint L Dwarfs, T Dwarfs, and z≳ 5.5 Quasars

Details An Efficient Survey for Faint L Dwarfs, T Dwarfs, and z≳ 5.5 Quasars An Efficient Survey for Faint L Dwarfs, T Dwarfs, and z≳ 5.5 Quasars

May 2000

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000aas...196.0310h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, 196th AAS Meeting, #03.10; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 32, p.678

Physics

Scientific paper

The discovery of L and T dwarfs has opened a new window on the study of brown dwarfs, the physics of their atmospheres, and their mass function, which can be constrained through modelling of magnitude-limited samples. We have in hand 35 sq arcdeg of a planned 100 sq arcdeg of deep (Rz)AB imaging from which we can identify candidate L and T dwarfs and z≳ 5.5 quasars to z'=22 through IR followup of r'-z'>=4 objects. These three populations of objects are well separated in the r'-z'/z'-J color-color diagram, and are relatively bright (L & T dwarfs, J<20 quasars, J<21.5). Pilot J imaging of 28 z'<22 targets sparsely sampled from ~4 sq arcdeg demonstrates our efficient selection: 23 have colors consistent with M7-L8 dwarfs, 2 with L8 or T dwarfs, 1 with a T dwarf, and 2 with z≳ 5.5 quasars (undetected in J). Thus we have proposed a JHK snapshot survey to rapidly and efficiently assemble a large sample of L and T dwarfs complete to 2\fm5 fainter in J than 2MASS or Sloan. We may be able to determine spectral classes for our entire sample from colors alone, if further spectroscopy confirms the suggestion, based on Sloan L dwarf colors, that z'-J for L dwarfs depends monotonically on spectral class. Despite covering only 1/400 the area of 2MASS, we probe ~1/12 its volume and our fainter brown dwarf sample will have lower , plus we may be more sensitive to L-T transition objects since we do not select on IR-IR colors. The full 100 sq arcdeg survey could find more than 50 J<18.5 T dwarfs, 450 J<19.5 L dwarfs and 1000 J<20 M7-M9 dwarfs, plus up to 100 z≳ 5.5 quasars. We will present candidate counts over >=6.5 sq arcdeg and compare to predictions of brown dwarf + z≳ 5.5 quasar surface densities.

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