Related papers: The missing M dwarfs
The process that leads to the formation and early evolution of low-mass stars is in a broad sense well understood theoretically and carefully traced observationally. The largest uncertainties in this framework reside in the poorly known…
A complete accounting of nearby objects -- from the highest-mass white dwarf progenitors down to low-mass brown dwarfs -- is now possible, thanks to an almost complete set of trigonometric parallax determinations from Gaia, ground-based…
Abridged: We have undertaken a series of hydrodynamical simulations of multiple star formation in small turbulent molecular clouds. Our goal is to determine the sensitivity of the properties of the resulting stars and brown dwarfs to…
We use the results of realistic N-body simulations to investigate the appearance of the white dwarf population in dense star clusters. We show that the presence of a substantial binary population in a star cluster, and the interaction of…
We present results of a study of very low mass halo stars. Using a sample of proper motion stars identified from plate material taken as part of the first and second Palomar Sky Surveys, we measure the space density, metallicity…
Planets have been detected around a variety of stars, including low-mass objects, such as brown dwarfs. However, such extreme cases are challenging for planet formation models. Recent sub-millimeter observations of disks around brown dwarf…
Context: The principal mechanism by which brown dwarfs form, and its relation to the formation of higher-mass (i.e. hydrogen-burning) stars, is poorly understood. Aims: We advocate a new model for the formation of brown dwarfs. Methods: In…
Brown dwarfs -- substellar bodies more massive than planets but not massive enough to initiate the sustained hydrogen fusion that powers self-luminous stars -- are born hot and slowly cool as they age. As they cool below about 2,300 K,…
Observed variations in the IMF are reviewed with an emphasis on environmental density. The remote field IMF studied in the LMC by several authors is clearly steeper than most cluster IMFs, which have slopes close to the Salpeter value.…
Presence of dust in galaxies removes half or more of the stellar energy from the UV-optical budget of the Universe and has profound impact on our understanding of how galaxies evolve. Measures of opacity in local galaxies are reviewed…
(Abridged) We assemble a sample of 3258 low-redshift galaxies from the SDSS DR6 with complementary photometric observations by GALEX, 2MASS and IRAS at far-ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. We use a recent, simple but physically…
We conjecture that brown dwarfs are substellar objects because they have been ejected from small newborn multiple systems which have decayed in dynamical interactions. In this view, brown dwarfs are stellar embryos for which the star…
The properties of multiple stellar systems have long provided important empirical constraints for star formation theories, enabling (along with several other lines of evidence) a concrete, qualitative picture of the birth and early…
Precise measurements of the fundamental properties of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs are key to understanding the physics underlying their formation and evolution. While there has been great progress over the last decade in studying the…
This paper discusses the evolution of the correlation between galaxy star formation rates (SFRs) and stellar mass (M*) over the last ~10 Gyrs, particularly focusing on its environmental dependence. We first present the mid-infrared (MIR)…
We set up a model for the evolution of the galaxy luminosity function, taking advantage of recent work that brought in some better understanding of the mass function for gravitationally condensed objects. The physics of cooling of the…
High spatial and spectral resolution observations of the atomic interstellar medium in nearby dwarf galaxies reveal evidence for warm and cold neutral gas, just like the phases in our own Galaxy. The cold or quiescent phase (about 20% of…
We present a study of M dwarfs discovered in a large area, multicolor survey. We employ a combination of morphological and color criteria to select M dwarfs to a limiting magnitude in V of 22, the deepest such ground-based survey for M…
Recent observations point to the presence of structured dust grains in the discs surrounding young brown dwarfs, thus implying that the first stages of planet formation take place also in the sub-stellar regime. Here, we investigate the…
Recent observations of binary stars in the Galactic field show that the binary fraction and the mean orbital separation both decrease as a function of decreasing primary mass. We present $N$-body simulations of the effects of dynamical…