The sub-stellar birth rate from UKIDSS

April 2013 • 2013MNRAS.430.1171D

Authors • Day-Jones, A. C. • Marocco, F. • Pinfield, D. J. • Zhang, Z. H. • Burningham, B. • Deacon, N. • Ruiz, M. T. • Gallardo, J. • Jones, H. R. A. • Lucas, P. W. L. • Jenkins, J. S. • Gomes, J. • Folkes, S. L. • Clarke, J. R. A.

Abstract • We present a new sample of mid-L to mid-T dwarfs with effective temperatures of 1100-1700 K selected from the UKIDSS Large Area Survey (LAS) and confirmed with infrared spectra from X-shooter/Very Large Telescope. This effective temperature range is especially sensitive to the formation history of Galactic brown dwarfs and allows us to constrain the form of the sub-stellar birth rate, with sensitivity to differentiate between a flat (stellar like) birth rate and an exponentially declining form. We present the discovery of 63 new L and T dwarfs from the UKIDSS LAS DR7, including the identification of 12 likely unresolved binaries, which form the first complete sub-set from our programme, covering 495 square degrees of sky, complete to J = 18.1. We compare our results for this sub-sample with simulations of differing birth rates for objects of masses 0.10-0.03 M_⊙ and ages 1-10 Gyr. We find that the more extreme birth rates (e.g. a halo type form) can likely be excluded as the true form of the birth rate. In addition, we find that although there is substantial scatter we find a preference for a mass function, with a power-law index α in the range -1 < α < 0 that is consistent (within the errors) with the studies of late T dwarfs.

Links

• PREPRINT http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.4996
• ELECTR https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fmnras%2Fsts685
• SIMBAD http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbo.pl?bibcode=2013MNRAS.430.1171D
• PDF https://academic.oup.com/mnras/pdf-lookup/doi/10.1093/mnras/sts685
• DATA http://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/MNRAS/430/1171
• DATA http://archive.eso.org/bin/ads2eso?2013MNRAS.430.1171D
• DATA https://irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/bibdata/2013/D/2013MNRAS.430.1171D.html