相关论文: Astro2020 White Paper: The L/T Transition

Brown dwarfs are massive, giant exoplanet analogues subject to variability and colour changes, known as the L/T transition, fundamental for their thermal evolution. The drivers of the L/T transition remain elusive, with atmospheric…

While the precise mechanism responsible for the L to T dwarf transition remains unclear, it is clearly caused by changing cloud characteristics. Here we briefly review data relevant to understanding the nature of the transition and argue…

The transition between the L dwarf and T dwarf spectral classes is one of the most remarkable along the stellar/brown dwarf Main Sequence, separating sources with photospheres containing mineral condensate clouds from those containing…

The admitted, conventional scenario to explain the complex spectral evolution of brown dwarfs (BD) since their first detections twenty years ago, has always been the key role played by micron-size condensates, called "dust" or "clouds", in…

We present a new suite of atmosphere models with flexible cloud parameters to investigate the effects of clouds on brown dwarfs across the L/T transition. We fit these models to a sample of 13 objects with well-known masses, distances, and…

We present new evolution sequences for very low mass stars, brown dwarfs and giant planets and use them to explore a variety of influences on the evolution of these objects. We compare our results with previous work and discuss the causes…

Clouds of metal-bearing condensates play a critical role in shaping the emergent spectral energy distributions of the coolest classes of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs, L and T dwarfs. Because condensate clouds in planetary atmospheres…

The evolution of brown dwarfs from L to T spectral types is one of the least understood aspects of the ultracool population, partly for lack of a large, well-defined, and well-characterized sample in the L/T transition. To improve the…

Since the discovery of the first L dwarf 19 years ago and the discovery of the first T dwarf 7 years after that, we have amassed a large list of these objects, now numbering almost six hundred. Despite making headway in understanding the…

The last few years has seen a dramatic increase in the number of exoplanets known and in the range of methods for characterising their atmospheric properties. At the same time, new discoveries of increasingly cooler brown dwarfs have pushed…

Current atmospheric models cannot reproduce some of the characteristics of the transition between the L dwarfs with cloudy atmospheres and the T dwarfs with dust-depleted photospheres. It has been proposed that a majority of the L/T…

The L/T transition is a critical evolutionary stage for brown dwarfs and self-luminous giant planets. L/T transition brown dwarfs are more likely to be spectroscopically variable, and their high-amplitude variability probes distributions in…

Straddling the traditional realms of the planets and the stars, objects below the edge of the main sequence have such unique properties, and are being discovered in such quantities, that one can rightly claim that a new field at the…

One of the mechanisms suggested for the L to T dwarf spectral type transition is the appearance of relatively cloud-free regions across the disk of brown dwarfs as they cool. The existence of partly cloudy regions has been supported by…

Growing observations of brown dwarfs have provided evidence for strong atmospheric circulation on these objects. Directly imaged planets share similar observations, and can be viewed as low-gravity versions of brown dwarfs. Vigorous…

We developed a simple, physical and self-consistent cloud model for brown dwarfs and young giant exoplanets. We compared different parametrisations for the cloud particle size, by either fixing particle radii, or fixing the mixing…

Using a model for refractory clouds, a novel algorithm for handling them, and the latest gas-phase molecular opacities, we have produced a new series of L and T dwarf spectral and atmosphere models as a function of gravity and metallicity,…

I summarize results on transitional and degenerate brown dwarfs presented in a series titled Primeval very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. I introduce an L subdwarf classification scheme, which classified L subdwarfs into three metal…

Growing observational evidence has suggested active meteorology in atmospheres of brown dwarfs (BDs) and directly imaged extrasolar giant planets (EGPs). In particular, a number of surveys have shown that near-IR brightness variability is…

The color-magnitude (CM) diagram of cool dwarfs and brown dwarfs based on the recent astrometry data is compared with the CM diagram transformed from the theoretical evolutionary tracks via the unified cloudy models (UCMs) of L and T…