A new brown dwarf desert? A scarcity of wide ultracool binaries

被引：37
作者：
Allen, Peter R.
Koerner, David W.
McElwain, Michael W.
Cruz, Kelle L.
Reid, I. Neill
机构：
[1] Penn State Univ, Dept Astron & Astrophys, University Pk, PA 16802 USA
[2] No Arizona Univ, Dept Phys & Astron, Flagstaff, AZ 86011 USA
[3] Univ Calif Los Angeles, Dept Phys & Astron, Los Angeles, CA 90024 USA
[4] Amer Museum Nat Hist, Dept Astrophys, New York, NY 10024 USA
[5] Space Telescope Sci Inst, Baltimore, MD 21218 USA
来源：
ASTRONOMICAL JOURNAL | 2007年 / 133卷 / 03期
关键词：
binaries : general; stars; low-mass; brown dwarfs;
D O I：
10.1086/510346
中图分类号：
P1 [天文学];
学科分类号：
0704 ;
摘要：
We present the results of a deep-imaging search for wide companions to low-mass stars and brown dwarfs using NSFCam on the Infrared Telescope Facility. We searched a sample of 132 M7-L8 dwarfs to magnitude limits of J similar to 20.5 and K similar to 18.5, corresponding to secondary-to-primary mass ratios of similar to 0.5. No companions were found with separations between 2" and 31" (similar to 40 to similar to 1000 AU). This null result implies a wide companion frequency below 2.3% at the 95% confidence level within the sensitivity limits of the survey. Preliminary modeling efforts indicate that we could have detected 85% of companions more massive than 0.05 M-circle dot and 50% above 0.03 M-circle dot.
引用
收藏
页码：971 / 978
页数：8
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