Related papers: Distinct Rotational Evolution of Giant Planets and…
Surveys of young star-forming regions have discovered a growing population of planetary-mass (<13 M_Jup) companions around young stars. There is an ongoing debate as to whether these companions formed like planets (that is, from the…
We present a survey for photometric variability in young, low-mass brown dwarfs with the Spitzer Space Telescope. The 23 objects in our sample show robust signatures of youth and share properties with directly-imaged exoplanets. We present…
While brown dwarfs show similarities with stars in their early life, their spin evolution is much more akin to that of planets. We have used lightcurves from the K2 mission to measure new rotation periods for 18 young brown dwarfs in the…
We review the current state of our knowledge concerning the rotation and angular momentum evolution of young stellar objects and brown dwarfs from a primarily observational view point. Periods are typically accurate to 1% and available for…
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.…
Direct imaging has led to the discovery of several giant planet and brown dwarf companions. These imaged companions populate a mass, separation and age domain (mass>1MJup, orbits>5AU, age<1Gyr) quite distinct from the one occupied by…
Measuring the occurrence rates of celestial objects is a valuable way to study their origins and evolution. Giant planets and brown dwarfs produce large Doppler signatures that are easily detectable by modern instrumentation, and legacy…
This review summarises recent observational results regarding the evolution of angular momentum and disks in brown dwarfs. The observations clearly show that brown dwarfs beyond ages of 10 Myr are exclusively fast rotators and do not spin…
Brown dwarfs are intermediate objects between planets and stars. The lower end of the brown-dwarf mass range overlaps with the one of massive planets and therefore the distinction between planets and brown-dwarf companions may require to…
To date, hundreds of sub-stellar objects with masses between $1-80\ M_{\rm Jup}$ have been detected orbiting main-sequence stars. The current convention uses the deuterium-burning limit, $M_c \approx 13 M_{\rm Jup}$ to divide this…
We analyze the angular momentum evolution from the red giant branch (RGB) to the horizontal branch (HB) and along the HB. Using rotation velocities for stars in the globular cluster M13, we find that the required angular momentum for the…
Direct imaging has confirmed the existence of substellar companions on wide orbits. To understand the formation and evolution mechanisms of these companions, the full population properties must be characterized. We aim at detecting giant…
Up to now, most planet search projects have concentrated on F to K stars. In order to considerably widen the view, we have stated a survey for planets of old, nearby brown dwarfs and very low mass stars. Using UVES, we have observed 26…
To understand how planetary spin evolves and traces planet formation processes, we measure rotational line broadening in eight planetary-mass objects (PMOs) of various ages (1--800 Myr) using near-infrared high-resolution spectra from…
Recent studies have shown that close-in brown dwarfs in the mass range 35-55 M$_{\rm Jup}$ are almost depleted as companions to stars, suggesting that objects with masses above and below this gap might have different formation mechanisms.…
The surface rotations of some red giants are so fast that they must have been spun up by tidal interaction with a close companion, either another star, a brown dwarf, or a planet. We focus here on the case of red giants that are spun up by…
Free-floating planetary mass objects--worlds that roam interstellar space untethered to a parent star--challenge conventional notions of planetary formation and migration, but also of star and brown dwarf formation. We focus on the…
The recent detection of the transit of very massive substellar companions (CoRoT-3b, Deleuil et al. 2008; CoRoT-15b, Bouchy et al. 2010; WASP-30b, Anderson et al. 2010; Hat-P-20b, Bakos et al. 2010) provides a strong constraint to planet…
Stellar multiplicity is believed to influence planetary formation and evolution, although the precise nature and extent of this role remain ambiguous. We present a study aimed at testing the role of stellar multiplicity in the formation…
The orientation between a star's spin axis and a planet's orbital plane provides valuable information about the system's formation and dynamical history. For non-transiting planets at wide separations, true stellar obliquities are…