On the Formation of Brown Dwarfs

Abstract

The observational properties of brown dwarfs pose challenges to the theory of star formation. Because their mass is much smaller than the typical Jeans mass of interstellar clouds, brown dwarfs are most likely formed through secondary fragmentation processes, rather than through the direct collapse of a molecular cloud core. In order to prevent substantial post-formation mass accretion, young brown dwarfs must leave the high density formation regions in which they form. We propose here that brown dwarfs are formed in the circumbinary disks. Through post-formation dynamical interaction with their host binary stars, young brown dwarfs are either scattered to large distance or removed, with modest speed, from their cradles.

arXiv commentaccepted by AJ, AAS Latex, 20 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• How Dry is the Brown Dwarf Desert?: Quantifying the Relative Number of Planets, Brown Dwarfs and Stellar Companions around Nearby Sun-like Stars
• ALMA Measurements of Circumstellar Material in the GQ Lup System
• Exploring the Lower Mass Function in the young open Cluster IC 4665
• The VAST Survey - IV. A wide brown dwarf companion to the A3V star $\zeta$ Delphini
• Resolved Spectroscopy of M Dwarf/L Dwarf Binaries. III. The "Wide" L3.5/L4 Dwarf Binary 2MASS J15500845+1455180AB
• The Origins of the Substellar Companion to GQ Lup
• A dual-mask coronagraph for observing faint companions to binary stars