A Search for Variability in Exoplanet Analogues and Low-Gravity Brown Dwarfs
Johanna M. Vos, Beth A. Biller, Mariangela Bonavita, Simon Eriksson, Michael C. Liu, William M. J. Best, Stanimir Metchev, Jacqueline Radigan, Katelyn N. Allers, Markus Janson, Esther Buenzli, Trent J. Dupuy, Mickaël Bonnefoy, Elena Manjavacas, Wolfgang Brandner, Ian Crossfield, Niall Deacon, Thomas Henning, Derek Homeier, Taisiya Kopytova, Joshua Schlieder
(Submitted on 20 Nov 2018)
We report the results of a J-band survey for photometric variability in a sample of young, low-gravity objects using the New Technology Telescope (NTT) and the United Kingdom InfraRed Telescope (UKIRT). Surface gravity is a key parameter in the atmospheric properties of brown dwarfs and this is the first large survey that aims to test the gravity dependence of variability properties. We do a full analysis of the spectral signatures of youth and assess the group membership probability of each target using membership tools from the literature. This results in a 30 object sample of young low-gravity brown dwarfs. Since we are lacking in objects with spectral types later than L9, we focus our statistical analysis on the L0-L8.5 objects. We find that the variability occurrence rate of L0-L8.5 low-gravity brown dwarfs in this survey is 30+16−8%. We reanalyse the results of Radigan 2014 and find that the field dwarfs with spectral types L0-L8.5 have a variability occurrence rate of 11+13−4%. We determine a probability of 98% that the samples are drawn from different distributions. This is the first quantitative indication that the low-gravity objects are more likely to be variable than the field dwarf population. Furthermore, we present follow-up JS and KS observations of the young, planetary-mass variable object PSO 318.5-22 over three consecutive nights. We find no evidence of phase shifts between the JS and KS bands and find higher JS amplitudes. We use the JS lightcurves to measure a rotational period of 8.45±0.05 hr for PSO 318.5-22.
Comments: accepted for publication in MNRAS
Subjects: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty3123
Cite as: arXiv:1811.08370 [astro-ph.SR] (or arXiv:1811.08370v1 [astro-ph.SR] for this version)
Submission history
From: Johanna Vos
[v1] Tue, 20 Nov 2018 17:05:48 UTC (9,066 KB)
