Related papers: Interferometric Identification of a Pre-Brown Dwar…
Our first aim is to calculate the minimum mass for Primary Fragmentation in a variety of potential star-formation scenarios, i.e. (i) hierarchical fragmentation of a 3-D medium; (ii) one-shot, 2-D fragmentation of a shock-compressed layer;…
Sun-like stars are known to host a paucity of brown dwarf companions at close separations. Direct imaging surveys of intermediate-mass stars have suggested that the brown dwarf desert may be fundamentally a feature in the mass ratio.…
In this paper, we extend the calculations conducted previously in the stellar regime to determine the brown dwarf IMF in the Galactic disk. We perform Monte Carlo calculations taking into account the brown dwarf formation rate, spatial…
We present the full results of our decade-long astrometric monitoring programs targeting 31 ultracool binaries with component spectral types M7-T5. Joint analysis of resolved imaging from Keck Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope and…
Brown dwarfs are failed stars with very low mass (13 to 75 $M_J$), and an effective temperature lower than 2500 K. Thus, they play a key role in understanding the gap in the mass function between stars and planets. However, due to their…
In an attempt to study whether the formation of brown dwarfs (BDs) takes place as a scaled-down version of low-mass stars, we conducted IRAM30m/MAMBO-II observations at 1.2 mm in a sample of 12 proto-BD candidates selected from Spitzer/IRAC…
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a key property of stellar populations. There is growing evidence that the classical star-formation mechanism by the direct cloud fragmentation process has difficulties reproducing the observed…
We present high-resolution ALMA observations at 0.89 mm of the Class II brown dwarf 2MASS J04442713+2512164 (2M0444), achieving a spatial resolution of 0$.\!\!^{\prime\prime}$046 ($\sim$6.4 au at the distance to the source). These…
We have measured high-precision parallaxes for a large sample of candidate young (~10-100 Myr) and intermediate-age (~100-600 Myr) ultracool dwarfs, with spectral types ranging from M8 to T2.5. These objects are compelling benchmarks for…
We rehearse the physical and theoretical considerations that define the nature of Brown Dwarfs, in particular the maximum mass for a Brown Dwarf (set by the Hydrogen-Burning Limit) and the minimum mass for a Brown Dwarf (set by the Opacity…
We present results from the largest numerical simulation of star formation to resolve the fragmentation process down to the opacity limit. The simulation follows the collapse and fragmentation of a large-scale turbulent molecular cloud to…
After decades of brown dwarf discovery and follow-up, we can now infer the functional form of the mass distribution within 20 parsecs, which serves as a constraint on star formation theory at the lowest masses. Unlike objects on the main…
We have determined astrometric positions for 15 WISE-discovered late-type brown dwarfs (6 T8-9 and 9 Y dwarfs) using the Keck II telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Hubble Space Telescope. Combining data from 8 to 20 epochs we…
The study of the properties of disks around young brown dwarfs can provide important clues on the formation of these very low-mass objects and on the possibility of forming planetary systems around them. The presence of warm dusty disks…
Brown dwarfs, which straddle the mass range between stars and planets, appear to be common both in the solar neighborhood and in star-forming regions. Their ubiquity makes the question of their origin an important one both for our…
I summarize results on transitional and degenerate brown dwarfs presented in a series titled Primeval very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. I introduce an L subdwarf classification scheme, which classified L subdwarfs into three metal…
We derive mass functions (MF) for halo red dwarfs (the faintest hydrogen burning stars) and then extrapolate to place limits on the total mass of halo brown dwarfs (stars not quite massive enough to burn hydrogen). The mass functions are…
We have imaged two bona-fide brown dwarfs with TReCS/GEMINI-S and find mid-infrared excess emission that can be explained by optically thick dust disk models. In the case of the young ($\approx$2Myr) Cha H$\alpha$1 we measure fluxes at…
A complete accounting of nearby objects -- from the highest-mass white dwarf progenitors down to low-mass brown dwarfs -- is now possible, thanks to an almost complete set of trigonometric parallax determinations from Gaia, ground-based…
Giant planets and brown dwarfs play a crucial role in star and planet formation, as they are situated at the boundary between planets and stars with uncertain formation mechanisms. Previous observational searches for the formation boundary…