Related papers: Where to find over-massive brown dwarfs: new bench…

The formation of brown dwarfs via encounters between proto-stars has been confirmed with high-resolution numerical simulations with a restricted treatment of the thermal conditions. The new results indicate that young brown dwarfs (BDs)…

We show that the dearth of brown dwarfs in short-period orbits around Solar-mass stars - the brown dwarf desert - can be understood as a consequence of inward migration within an evolving protoplanetary disc. Brown dwarf secondaries forming…

Serving as the progenitors of electromagnetic and gravitational wave transients, massive stars have received renewed interest in recent years. However, many aspects of their birth and evolution remain opaque, particularly in the context of…

We review four mechanisms for forming brown dwarfs: (i) turbulent fragmentation (producing very low-mass prestellar cores); (ii) gravitational instabilities in discs; (iii) dynamical ejection of stellar embryos from their placental cores;…

Studies of fundamental parameters of very low-mass objects are indispensable to provide tests of stellar evolution models that are used to derive theoretical masses of brown dwarfs and planets. However, only objects with dynamically…

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…

One of the characteristic features of low-mass stars is their propensity to shed large amounts of angular momentum throughout their evolution. This distinguishs them from brown dwarfs which remain fast rotators over timescales of gigayears.…

The mass domain where massive extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs lay is still poorly understood. Indeed, not even a clear dividing line between massive planets and brown dwarfs has been established yet. This is partly due to the paucity of…

The detection of brown dwarfs in globular star clusters will allow us to break the degeneracies in age, mass and composition that affect our current models, and therefore to constrain the physics of their atmospheres and interiors.…

There is growing evidence that brown dwarfs may be comparable to main-sequence stars in terms of their abundance. In this paper, we explore the prospects for the existence of life on Earth-like planets around brown dwarfs. We consider the…

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…

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 examine the evolution of low-mass star and brown dwarf eclipsing binaries. These objects are rapid rotators and are believed to shelter large magnetic fields. We suggest that reduced convective efficiency, due to fast rotation and large…

Owing to their similarities with giant exoplanets, brown dwarf companions of stars provide insights into the fundamental processes of planet formation and evolution. From their orbits, several brown dwarf companions are found to be more…

In this chapter the focus is on the properties of post-Asymptotic Giant Branch (post-AGB) stars in binary systems. Their Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) are very characteristic: they show a near-infrared excess, indicative of the…

We consider the formation of dwarf carbon stars via accretion from a carbon AGB companion in light of the new 107 object sample of Downes et al. (2004). This sample is now large enough to allow good mass determination via comparison of a…

We report on nine wide common proper motion systems containing late-type M, L, or T companions. We confirm six previously reported companions, and identify three new systems. The ages of these systems are determined using diagnostics for…

Observations of brown dwarfs provide important feedback on theories of atmospheres and inner structure of substellar objects. Brown dwarf binary systems furthermore offer the unique opportunity to determine the mass of individual brown…

Several dozen binary ultracool and brown dwarf systems have been identified to date. These systems represent valuable probes of star and planet formation at the lowest mass scales. To date, the study of these ultracool binaries has been…

Although ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULX) are important for astrophysics due to their extreme apparent super-Eddington luminosities, their nature is still poorly known. Theoretical and observational studies suggest that ULXs could be a…