Related papers: Forming isolated brown dwarfs by turbulent fragmen…
Hundreds of brown dwarfs (BDs) have been discovered in the last few years in stellar clusters and among field stars. BDs are almost as numerous as hydrogen burning stars and so a theory of star formation should also explain their origin.…
A gas-grain time dependent chemical code, UCL\_CHEM, has been used to investigate the possibility of using chemical tracers to differentiate between the possible formation mechanisms of brown dwarfs. In this work, we model the formation of…
We discuss a scenario in which brown dwarfs are formed like stars, except that their full collapse phases are interrupted through dynamical interactions in small multiple systems, leading to the ejection of the lightest member. This…
We present a calculation of protostellar disk formation and evolution in which gaseous clumps (essentially, the first Larson cores formed via disk fragmentation) are ejected from the disk during the early stage of evolution. This is a…
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…
Theory and simulations suggest that it is possible to form low-mass hydrogen-burning stars, brown dwarfs and planetary-mass objects via disc fragmentation. As disc fragmentation results in the formation of several bodies at comparable…
A large fraction of the observed brown dwarfs may form by gravitational fragmentation of unstable discs. This model reproduces the brown dwarf desert, and provides an explanation the existence of planetary-mass objects and for the binary…
Observations of accretion disks around young brown dwarfs have led to the speculation that they may form planetary systems similar to normal stars. While there have been several detections of planetary-mass objects around brown dwarfs…
"Free-floating, non-deuterium-burning, substellar objects" are isolated bodies of a few Jupiter masses found in very young open clusters and associations, nearby young moving groups and in the immediate vicinity of the Sun. They are neither…
The formation of low-mass protostars and especially of brown dwarfs currently are ``hot topics'' in cool star research. The talks contributed to this splinter session discussed how low in mass and how low in luminosity objects might exist,…
Brown dwarfs occupy a middle ground in mass space between gaseous giant planets and ultra-cool dwarf stars, and the characterisation of their orbital orientations may shed light on how these neighbouring objects form. We present an analysis…
Brown dwarf formation and star formation efficiency are studied using a nested grid simulation that covers five orders of magnitude in spatial scale (10^4 - 0.1AU). Starting with a rotating magnetized compact cloud with a mass of 0.22…
The origin of brown dwarfs (BDs) is an important component of the theory of star formation, because BDs are approximately as numerous as solar mass stars. It has been suggested that BDs originate from the gravitational fragmentation of…
We examine the conditions under which binary and multiple stars may form out of turbulent molecular cloud cores using high resolution 3-D, adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) hydrodynamics (Truelove et al., 1997, 1998; Klein, 1999). We argue…
We conduct a pebble-driven planet population synthesis study to investigate the formation of planets around very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs, in the (sub)stellar mass range between $0.01 \ M_{\odot}$ and $0.1 \ M_{\odot}$. Based on the…
In turbulent fragmentation, star formation occurs in condensations created by converging flows. The condensations must be sufficiently massive, dense and cool to be gravitationally unstable, so that they start to contract; {\it and} they…
We suggest that planets, brown dwarfs, and even low mass stars can be formed by fragmentation of protoplanetary disks around very massive stars M>~100 solar masses. We discuss how fragmentation conditions make the formation of very massive…
In this review, we examine the successes and weaknesses of modern low-mass star and brown dwarf theory.(1) We first focus on the mechanical (equation of state) and thermal (atmosphere) properties and on the evolution. We then examine the…
We investigate the Hierarchical Gravitational Fragmentation scenario through numerical simulations of the prestellar stages of the collapse of a marginally gravitationally unstable isothermal sphere immersed in a strongly gravitationally…
Most stars are born in clusters and the resulting gravitational interactions between cluster members may significantly affect the evolution of circumstellar discs and therefore the formation of planets and brown dwarfs. Recent findings…