A Spitzer Search For Planetary-Mass Brown Dwarfs With Circumstellar Disks: Candidate Selection

Abstract

We report on initial results from a Spitzer program to search for very low-mass brown dwarfs in Ophiuchus. This program is an extension of an earlier study by Allers et al. which had resulted in an extraordinary success rate, 18 confirmed out of 19 candidates. Their program combined near-infrared and Spitzer photom- etry to identify objects with very cool photospheres together with circumstellar disk emission to indicate youth. Our new program has obtained deep IRAC pho- tometry of a 0.5 deg2 field that was part of the original Allers et al. study. We report 18 new candidates whose luminosities extend down to 10-4 L\cdot which sug- gests masses down to ~ 2 MJ if confirmed. We describe our selection techniques, likely contamination issues, and follow-on photometry and spectroscopy that are in progress.

References in corpus (5)

• Characterizing Young Brown Dwarfs using Low Resolution Near-IR Spectra
• Spitzer/IRAC Photometry of M, L, and T Dwarfs
• Young, Low-Mass Brown Dwarfs with Mid-Infrared Excesses
• Substellar Objects in Nearby Young Clusters (SONYC): The bottom of the Initial Mass Function in NGC1333
• Contamination by field late-M, L and T dwarfs in deep surveys

Cited by in corpus (5)

• The effects of dynamical interactions on planets in young substructured star clusters
• A Survey for New Stars and Brown Dwarfs in the Ophiuchus Star-forming Complex
• A search for pre-substellar cores and proto-brown dwarf candidates in Taurus: multiwavelength analysis in the B213-L1495 clouds
• Hints for Small Disks around Very Low-Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs
• The low-mass stellar population in the young cluster Tr37: Disk evolution, accretion, and environment