Latest news on the Physics of Brown dwarfs

Abstract

The physics of brown dwarfs has continuously improved since the discovery of these astrophysical bodies. The first important developments were devoted to the description of their mechanical structure, with the derivation of an appropriate equation of state, and the modelling of their atmosphere characterised by strong molecular absorption. New challenges are arising with progress in observational techniques which provide data of unprecedented accuracy. The goal of this chapter is to describe some of the current challenges for the theory of brown dwarfs. Those challenges concerns atmospheric dust and cloud, non-equilibrium atmospheric chemistry, the effect of rotation and magnetic fields on internal structure and the very early phases of evolution characterised by accretion processes. The field remains lively as more and more high quality observational data become available and because of increasing discoveries of exoplanets. Indeed, many physical properties of giant exoplanets can be described by the same theory as brown dwarfs, as described in this chapter.

Invited Chapter - "50 Years of Brown Dwarfs", ed. Vicki Joergens, Astrophysics and Space Science (final version available on http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-01162-2)

References in corpus (12)

• Theory of Star Formation
• The Evolution of L and T Dwarfs in Color-Magnitude Diagrams
• On the Luminosity of Young Jupiters
• Evolution of low-mass star and brown dwarf eclipsing binaries
• Simulations of dynamo action in fully convective stars
• The First Direct Measurements of Magnetic Fields on Very Low-Mass Stars
• A comparison of chemistry and dust cloud formation in ultracool dwarf model atmospheres
• Vertical Atmospheric Structure in a Variable Brown Dwarf: Pressure-dependent Phase Shifts in Simultaneous Hubble Space Telescope-Spitzer Light Curves
• Interferometric Identification of a Pre-Brown Dwarf
• Detection of strong activity in the eclipsing binary brown dwarf 2MASSJ05352184-0546085 - A possible explanation for the temperature reversal
• The Integral Field Spectrograph of SPHERE: the Planet Finder for VLT
• Gaseous Planets, Protostars And Young Brown Dwarfs : Birth And Fate

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Ab initio equations of state for hydrogen (H-REOS.3) and helium (He-REOS.3) and their implications for the interior of Brown Dwarfs
• SOPHIE velocimetry of Kepler transit candidates. XIII. KOI-189 B and KOI-686 B: two very low-mass stars in long-period orbits
• Accounting for non-ideal mixing effects in the hydrogen-helium equation of state
• Direct imaging and spectroscopy of exoplanets with the ELT/HARMONI high-contrast module
• A Comparison of Simulated JWST Observations Derived from Equilibrium and Non-Equilibrium Chemistry Models of Giant Exoplanets