Related papers: How do brown dwarves form?
A large fraction of the observed brown dwarfs may form by gravitational fragmentation of unstable discs. This model reproduces the brown dwarf desert, and provides an explanation the existence of planetary-mass objects and for the binary…
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)…
Stars form from large clouds of gas and dust that contract under their own gravity. The birth of a star occurred when a fusion reaction of hydrogen into helium has ignited in its core. The key variable that determines the formation of a…
We investigate the formation of brown dwarfs and very low-mass stars through the gravitational fragmentation of infalling gas into stellar clusters. The gravitational potential of a forming stellar cluster provides the focus that attracts…
One of the fundamental questions in star formation is whether or not brown dwarfs form in the same way as stars, or more like giant planets. If their formation scenarios are different, we might expect brown dwarfs to have a different…
We explore the possibility that, in the vicinity of an OB star, a prestellar core which would otherwise have formed an intermediate or low-mass star may form a free-floating brown dwarf or planetary-mass object, because the outer layers of…
The origin of brown dwarfs (BDs) is an important component of the theory of star formation, because BDs are approximately as numerous as solar mass stars. It has been suggested that BDs originate from the gravitational fragmentation of…
The formation of brown dwarfs (BDs) due to the fragmentation of proto-stellar disks undergoing pairwise encounters was investigated. High resolution allowed the use of realistic initial disk models where both the vertical structure and the…
Most stars are born in clusters and the resulting gravitational interactions between cluster members may significantly affect the evolution of circumstellar discs and therefore the formation of planets and brown dwarfs. Recent findings…
The birth of stars involves not only accretion but also, counter-intuitively, the expulsion of matter in the form of highly supersonic outflows. Although this phenomenon has been seen in young stars, a fundamental question is whether it…
I discuss the role that disc fragmentation plays in the formation of gas giant and terrestrial planets, and how this relates to the formation of brown dwarfs and low-mass stars, and ultimately to the process of star formation. Protostellar…
We discuss the factors influencing the formation and gravitational fragmentation of protostellar discs. We start with a review of how observations of prestellar cores can be analysed statistically to yield plausible initial conditions for…
We suggest that a high proportion of brown dwarfs are formed by gravitational fragmentation of massive extended discs around Sun-like stars. Such discs should arise frequently, but should be observed infrequently, precisely because they…
The formation of objects below or close to the hydrogen burning limit is currently vividly discussed and is one of the main open issues in the field of the origins of stars and planets. Applying various observational techniques, we explored…
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…
The onset of planet formation in protoplanetary disks is marked by the growth and crystallization of sub-micron-sized dust grains accompanied by dust settling toward the disk mid-plane. Here we present infrared spectra of disks around brown…
Brown dwarfs may have such low masses because they are prematurely ejected from small unstable multiple systems, while the members are still actively building up their masses. We demonstrate that this scenario is consistent with all…
A local property of standard cosmology - growth of primordial perturbations - implies at least six different formation mechanisms of dwarf galaxies. A global property - the topology of the Universe - may enable direct observational study of…
We present results from the largest numerical simulation of star formation to resolve the fragmentation process down to the opacity limit. The simulation follows the collapse and fragmentation of a large-scale turbulent molecular cloud to…
Blue stragglers are thought to be formed from the merger or coalescence of two stars, but the details of their formation in clusters has been difficult to disentangle. We discuss the two main formation mechanisms for blue stragglers…