Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0608255

From: Gabriel Bihain [view email]

Date (v1): Fri, 11 Aug 2006 19:58:16 GMT (131kb)
Date (revised v2): Sat, 12 Aug 2006 13:35:48 GMT (132kb)

Pleiades low-mass brown dwarfs: the cluster L dwarf sequence

Authors: G. Bihain, R. Rebolo, V. J. S. Bejar, J. A. Caballero, C. A. L. Bailer-Jones, R. Mundt, J. A. Acosta-Pulido, A. Manchado Torres

Comments: 14 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics

We present a search for low-mass brown dwarfs in the Pleiades open cluster. The identification of Pleiades members fainter and cooler than those currently known allows us to constrain evolutionary models for L dwarfs and to extend the study of the cluster mass function to lower masses. We conducted a 1.8 deg^2 near-infrared J-band survey at the 3.5m Calar Alto Telescope, with completeness J~19.0. The detected sources were correlated with those of previously available optical I-band images (completeness I~22). Using a J versus I-J colour-magnitude diagram, we identified 18 faint red L-type candidates, with magnitudes 17.4<J<19.7 and colours I-J>3.2. If Pleiades members, their masses would span ~0.040-0.020 M_Sol. We performed follow-up HKs-band imaging to further confirm their cluster membership by photometry and proper motion. Out of 11 IJ candidates with proper motion measurements, we find six cluster members, two non-members and three whose membership is uncertain and depends on the intrinsic velocity dispersion of Pleiades brown dwarfs. This dispersion (>4 mas yr^-1) is at least four times that of cluster stars with masses >1 M_Sol. Five of the seven other IJ candidates are discarded because their J-Ks colours are bluer than those of confirmed members. The J versus I-J sequence of the L-type candidates at J>18 is not as red as theoretical models predict; it rather follows the field L-dwarf sequence translated to the cluster distance. This sequence overlapping, also observed in the J versus J-H and J-K diagrams, suggests that Pleiades and field L dwarfs may have similar spectral energy distributions and luminosities, and thus possibly similar radii. Also, we find alpha=0.5+-0.2 for a power-law approximation dN/dM propor. M^-alpha of the survey mass spectrum in the mass range 0.5-0.026 M_Sol.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0608255