A Dynamical Origin for Brown Dwarfs
Abstract
Brown dwarfs may have such low masses because they are prematurely ejected from small unstable multiple systems, while the members are still actively building up their masses. We demonstrate that this scenario is consistent with all currently existing observations of brown dwarfs, and propose further observational tests. We review the status of the latest realistic numerical simulations of disintegrating small N clusters, which show that many of the ejected members end up with masses that are substellar, drifting away from their birth region with velocities rarely exceeding 2 km/s.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0110481,
title = {A Dynamical Origin for Brown Dwarfs},
author = {Bo Reipurth and Cathie Clarke and Eduardo Delgado-Donate},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0110481},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
10 pages, including 2 figures. To be published in the proceedings of the Cool Stars, Stellar Systems, and the Sun 12th Cambridge Workshop ``The Future of Cool-Star Astrophysics''