Related papers: Why compositional convection cannot explain subste…
The admitted, conventional scenario to explain the complex spectral evolution of brown dwarfs (BD) since their first detections twenty years ago, has always been the key role played by micron-size condensates, called "dust" or "clouds", in…
We present new evolution sequences for very low mass stars, brown dwarfs and giant planets and use them to explore a variety of influences on the evolution of these objects. We compare our results with previous work and discuss the causes…
The recent distance determinations by HIPPARCOS have allowed to locate very precisely a reasonable set of subdwarfs in the HR diagram. A detailed comparison with evolutionary models is now possible and it has been recently claimed that the…
Thermal convection is one of the main mechanisms of heat transport and mixing in stars in general and also in the photospheric layers which emit the radiation that we observe with astronomical instruments. The present lecture notes first…
Ground-based and spacecraft telescopic observations, combined with an intensive modeling effort, have greatly enhanced our understanding of hot giant planets and brown dwarfs over the past ten years. Although these objects are all fluid,…
Differential settling and growth of dust grains impact the structure of the radiative envelopes of gaseous planets during formation. Sufficiently rapid dust growth can result in envelopes with substantially reduced opacities for radiation…
Straddling the traditional realms of the planets and the stars, objects below the edge of the main sequence have such unique properties, and are being discovered in such quantities, that one can rightly claim that a new field at the…
We investigate heat transport associated with compositionally-driven convection driven by crystallization at the ocean-crust interface in accreting neutron stars, or growth of the solid core in cooling white dwarfs. We study the effect of…
In granular systems, thermal cycling causes compaction, creep, penetration of dense objects, and ratcheting of grains against each other. On asteroid surfaces, thermal cycling is high amplitude and can happen billions of times in a few…
Growing observational evidence has suggested active meteorology in atmospheres of brown dwarfs (BDs) and directly imaged extrasolar giant planets (EGPs). In particular, a number of surveys have shown that near-IR brightness variability is…
Observationally, spectra of brown dwarfs indicate the presence of dust in their atmospheres while theoretically it is not clear what prevents the dust from settling and disappearing from the regions of spectrum formation. Consequently,…
Much progress has recently been made in understanding and quantifying vertical mixing induced by double-diffusive instabilities such as fingering convection (usually called thermohaline convection) and oscillatory double-diffusive…
The atmospheric pressure-temperature profiles for transiting giant planets cross a range of chemical transitions. Here we show that the particular shape of these irradiated profiles for warm giant planets below 1300 K lead to striking…
As brown dwarfs cool, a variety of species condense in their atmospheres, forming clouds. Iron and silicate clouds shape the emergent spectra of L dwarfs, but these clouds dissipate at the L/T transition. A variety of other condensates are…
Fingering convection (or thermohaline convection) is a weak yet important kind of mixing that occurs in stably-stratified stellar radiation zones in the presence of an inverse mean-molecular-weight gradient. Brown et al. (2013) recently…
We present a new suite of atmosphere models with flexible cloud parameters to investigate the effects of clouds on brown dwarfs across the L/T transition. We fit these models to a sample of 13 objects with well-known masses, distances, and…
Thermal transport properties of amorphous carbon has attracted increasing attention due to its extreme thermal properties: It has been reported to have among the highest thermal conductivity for bulk amorphous solids up to $\sim$ 37…
Turbulence acting on mixes of gas and particles generally evenly diffuses the latter through the former. However, in the presence of background gas temperature gradients a phenomenon known as turbulent thermal diffusion appears as a…
Hot luminous stars show a variety of phenomena in their photospheres and in their winds which still lack clear physical explanations at this time. Among these phenomena are non-thermal line broadening, line profile variability (LPVs),…
A subgroup of dwarf galaxies have characteristics of a possible evolutionary transition between star-forming systems and dwarf ellipticals. These systems host significant starbursts in combination with smooth, elliptical outer envelopes and…