Related papers: Two substellar survivor candidates; one found and …

Hot subdwarf B stars (sdBs) are evolved, core helium-burning objects located on the extreme horizontal branch. Their formation history is still puzzling as the sdB progenitors must lose nearly all of their hydrogen envelope during the…

HS 0705+6700 is a short-period (P=2.3 hours), close binary containing a hot sdB-type primary and a fully convective secondary. We have monitored this eclipsing binary for more than 2 years and as a result, 32 times of light minimum were…

This paper presents a sensitive and comprehensive IRAC 3-8 $\mu$m photometric survey of white dwarfs for companions in the planetary mass regime with temperatures cooler than the known T dwarfs. The search focuses on descendents of…

We present photometric, astrometric and spectroscopic observations of the nearby (9.8 pc) low-mass binary Gl 569Bab (in turn being a companion to the early-M star Gl 569A), made with the Keck adaptive optics facility. Having observed Gl…

Ultra-short period compact binaries are important sources of gravitational waves, which include e.g. the progenitors of type Ia supernovae or the progenitors of merger episodes that may lead to massive and magnetic single white dwarfs.…

We present the initial-final mass relation derived from 10 white dwarfs in wide binaries that consist of a main sequence star and a white dwarf. The temperature and gravity of each white dwarf was measured by fitting theoretical model…

Substellar multiplicity is a key outcome of the formation process. The biggest challenge for the next decade will be to distinguish between the formation history, environmental conditions, and dynamical evolution leading to the least…

Substellar objects, like planets and brown dwarfs orbiting stars, are by-products of the star formation process. The evolution of their host stars may have an enourmous impact on these small companions. Vice versa a planet might also…

Brown dwarfs occupy the important region in the mass range between stars and planets. Their existence, ambigious until only recently, and their properties give insight into stellar and planetary formation. We present statistical results of…

Mass, radius, and age are three of the most fundamental parameters for celestial objects, enabling studies of the evolution and internal physics of stars, brown dwarfs, and planets. Brown dwarfs are hydrogen-rich objects that are unable to…

The Upper Scorpius OB association is the nearest region of recent massive star formation and thus an important benchmark for investigations concerning stellar evolution and planet formation timescales. We present nine EBs in Upper Scorpius,…

Only a handful of gas giant planets orbiting white dwarfs are known. It remains unclear whether this paucity reflects observational challenges or the consequences of stellar evolution. We aim to carry out population synthesis of substellar…

Benchmark brown dwarfs are those objects for which fiducial constraints are available, including effective temperature, parallax, age, metallicity. We searched for new cool brown dwarfs in 186 sq.deg. of the new area covered by the data…

We have measured the orbital parameters of seven close binaries, including six new objects, in a radial velocity survey of 38 objects comprising a hot subdwarf star with orbital periods ranging from ~0.17 to 3 d. One new system, GALEX…

We present 2271 radial velocity measurements taken on 118 single-line binary stars, taken over eight years with the CORALIE spectrograph. The binaries consist of F/G/K primaries and M-dwarf secondaries. They were initially discovered…

Searches for companions of brown dwarfs by direct imaging mainly probe orbital separations > 3-10 AU. On the other hand, previous radial velocity surveys of brown dwarfs are mainly sensitive to separations smaller than 0.6 AU. It has been…

This paper summarizes the results of over 17 years of work searching for low mass stellar and substellar companions to more than 370 nearby white dwarfs. Roughly 60 low mass, unevolved companions were found and studied all together, with…

The predicted orbital period histogram of an sdB population is bimodal with a peak at short (< 10 days) and long (> 250 days) periods. Observationally, there are many short-period sdB systems known, but only very few long-period sdB…

Low mass white dwarfs are the remnants of disrupted red giant stars in binary millisecond pulsars and other exotic binary star systems. Some low mass white dwarfs cool rapidly, while others stay bright for millions of years due to stable…

Using a simulated disk brown dwarf (BD) population, we find that new large area infrared surveys are expected to identify enough BDs covering wide enough mass--age ranges to potentially measure the mass function down to ~0.03Mo, and the BD…