Related papers: The minimum mass for star formation, and the origi…
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…
We use $N$-body simulations to compare the evolution of spatial distributions of stars and brown dwarfs in young star-forming regions. We use three different diagnostics; the ratio of stars to brown dwarfs as a function of distance from the…
Giant planets and brown dwarfs are thought to form via a combination of pathways, including bottom-up mechanisms in which gas is accreted onto a solid core and top-down mechanisms in which gas collapses directly into a gravitationally-bound…
We have used Monte Carlo simulation techniques and published radial velocity surveys to constrain the frequency of very low-mass star (VLMS) and brown dwarf (BD) binary systems and their separation (a) distribution. Gaussian models for the…
Generic scalar-tensor theories of gravity predict deviations from Newtonian physics inside astrophysical bodies. In this paper, we point out that low mass stellar objects, red and brown dwarf stars, are excellent probes of these theories.…
Binary formation is an important aspect of star formation. One possible route for close-in binary formation is disk fragmentation$^{[1,2,3]}$. Recent observations show small scale asymmetries (<300 au) around young protostars$^{[2,4]}$,…
We present a statistical comparison of the mass ratio distribution of companions, as observed in different multiplicity surveys, to the most recent estimate of the single object mass function (Bochanski et al. 2010). The main goal of our…
Observations of accretion disks around young brown dwarfs have led to the speculation that they may form planetary systems similar to normal stars. While there have been several detections of planetary-mass objects around brown dwarfs…
A rapidly growing body of observational results suggests that planet formation takes place preferentially at high metallicity. In the core accretion model of planet formation this is expected because heavy elements are needed to form the…
We present a simple statistical analysis of recent numerical simulations exploring the correlation between the core mass function obtained from the fragmentation of a molecular cloud and the stellar mass function which forms from these…
Brown dwarfs, which occupy a fuzzy gap in mass between stars and planets, appear to be common both in the solar neighborhood and in star-forming regions. Their origin is a topic of significant current interest and debate. Some astronomers…
Inspired by recent observations suggesting that the retrograde precession of the brown dwarf binary 2M1510 AB is consistent with induction by a polar circumbinary planet, we investigate the formation of such planets by studying the…
Observations of young star-forming regions suggest that star clusters are born completely mass segregated. These initial conditions are, however, gradually lost as the star cluster evolves dynamically. For star clusters with single stars…
Recent VLA and CARMA observations have shown proto-stars in binaries with unprecedented resolution. Specifically, the proto-stellar masses of systems such as CB230 IRS1 and L1165-SMM1 have been detected in the range of $0.1-0.25 \,…
We investigate the dependence of stellar properties on the mean thermal Jeans mass in molecular clouds. We compare the results from the two largest hydrodynamical simulations of star formation to resolve the fragmentation process down to…
The occurrence rate of young giant planets from direct imaging surveys is a fundamental tracer of the efficiency with which planets form and migrate at wide orbital distances. These measurements have progressively converged to a value of…
We describe a search for close spectroscopic dwarf M star binaries using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to address the question of the rate of occurrence of multiplicity in M dwarfs. We use a template fitting technique to…
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…
At the earliest evolutionary stages, massive star-forming regions are deeply embedded within their natal cores and not observable at optical and near-infrared wavelengths. Interferometric high-spatial resolution mm dust continuum…
The radial velocities and direct imaging observations of exoplanets have suggested that the frequency of giant planets may decrease for intermediate-mass stars ($2.5-8\,M_\odot$). The key mechanism that could hinder their formation remains…