English

The Sonora Substellar Atmosphere Models VI. Red Diamondback: Extending Diamondback with SPHINX for Brown Dwarf Early Evolution

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2025-10-13 v1

Abstract

We extend the Sonora Diamondback brown dwarf evolution models to higher effective temperatures to treat the evolution of younger, higher mass objects. Due to an upper temperature limit of Teff=T_\mathrm{eff}=2400 K in the original Sonora Diamondback model grid, high mass objects (MM\geq 0.05 M=M_\mathrm{\odot}= 52.4 MJM_\mathrm{J}) were limited to ages of \gtrsim 100 Myr. To include the early evolution of brown dwarfs at Teff>T_\mathrm{eff}> 2400 K, we use existing and new SPHINX cloud-free model atmosphere calculations of temperature structures of M-type atmospheres. These atmospheres range from TeffT_\mathrm{eff} 2000--4000 K, log(gg) 3.0--5.5, and metallicity [M/H] -0.5 to ++0.5. This combination of Diamondback and SPHINX atmospheres, with a transition across TeffT_\mathrm{eff} 2000--2400 K, allows us to calculate evolution tracks, and infrared photometry and colors, for ages >> 1 Myr and masses from above the hydrogen burning minimum mass down to planetary masses. The Hayashi phase of massive brown dwarf evolution (ages << 10--100 Myr) at low surface gravity leads to nearly constant TeffT_\mathrm{eff} values, at effective temperatures much lower than would be obtained from simply extrapolating backwards from evolution tracks at older ages.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.08694,
  title  = {The Sonora Substellar Atmosphere Models VI. Red Diamondback: Extending Diamondback with SPHINX for Brown Dwarf Early Evolution},
  author = {C. Evan Davis and Jonathan J. Fortney and Aishwarya Iyer and Sagnick Mukherjee and Caroline V. Morley and Mark S. Marley and Michael Line and Philip S. Muirhead},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.08694},
  year   = {2025}
}