Related papers: The cool brown dwarf Gliese 229 B is a close binar…

It has been suggested that besides stellar companions, substellar objects in close orbits may be able to trigger mass loss in a common envelope phase and form hot subdwarfs. In an ongoing project we search for close substellar companions…

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…

Brown dwarfs with known physical properties (e.g., age and mass) are essential for constraining models of the formation and evolution of substellar objects. We present new high-contrast imaging observations of the circumbinary brown dwarf…

We present preliminary non-grey model atmospheres and interiors for cool brown dwarfs. The resulting synthetic spectra are compared to available spectroscopic and photometric observations of the coolest brown dwarf yet discovered, Gl229B…

Sun-like stars have stellar, brown dwarf and planetary companions. To help constrain their formation and migration scenarios, we analyse the close companions (orbital period < 5 years) of nearby Sun-like stars. By using the same sample to…

Hot subdwarf B stars (sdBs) are extreme horizontal branch stars believed to originate from close binary evolution. Indeed about half of the known sdB stars are found in close binaries with periods ranging from a few hours to a few days. The…

Brown dwarfs are commonly regarded as easily-observed templates for exoplanet studies, with comparable masses, physical sizes and atmospheric properties. There is indeed considerable overlap in the photospheric temperatures of the coldest…

Understanding how giant planets form requires observational input from directly imaged protoplanets. We used VLT/NACO and VLT/SPHERE to search for companions in the transition disc of 2MASS J19005804-3645048 (hereafter CrA-9), an accreting…

Our aim is to investigate the nature and formation of brown dwarfs by adding a new well-characterised object to the small sample of less than 20 transiting brown dwarfs. One brown dwarf candidate was found by the KESPRINT consortium when…

The mass domain where massive extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs overlap is still poorly understood due to the paucity of brown dwarfs orbiting close to solar-type stars, the so-called brown dwarf desert. In this paper we collect all of…

The formation of brown dwarfs (BDs) poses a key challenge to star formation theory. The observed dearth of nearby ($\leq 5$ AU) brown dwarf companions to solar-mass stars, known as the brown dwarf desert, as well as the tendency for…

We review our present understanding of the physical properties of substellar objects, brown dwarfs and irradiated or non-irradiated gaseous exoplanets. This includes a description of their internal properties, mechanical structure and heat…

Hot subdwarf stars of spectral type B (sdBs) are evolved, core helium-burning objects. The formation of those objects is puzzling, because the progenitor star has to lose almost its entire hydrogen envelope in the red-giant phase. Binary…

Brown dwarfs and giant planets orbiting close to a host star are subjected to significant irradiation that can modify the properties of their atmospheres. In order to test the atmospheric models that are used to describe these systems, it…

The coolest known brown dwarfs are our best analogs to extrasolar gas-giant planets. The prolific detections of such cold substellar objects in the past two years has spurred intensive followup, but the lack of accurate distances is a key…

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…

We combine Keck/HIRES radial velocities, imaging with HiCIAO/Subaru and the Hubble Space Telescope, and absolute astrometry from Hipparcos and Gaia to measure a dynamical mass of $70 \pm 5$ Jupiter masses for the brown dwarf companion to Gl…

We report the discovery and the analysis of the short timescale binary-lens microlensing event, MOA-2015-BLG-337. The lens system could be a planetary system with a very low mass host, around the brown dwarf/planetary mass boundary, or a…

We present some results of a CFHT adaptive optics search for companions to nearby dwarfs. We identify 21 new components in solar neighbourhood systems, of which 13 were found while surveying a volume-limited sample of M dwarfs within 12pc.…

At wide separations, planetary-mass and brown dwarf companions to solar type stars occupy a curious region of parameters space not obviously linked to binary star formation or solar-system scale planet formation. These companions provide…