A New Brown Dwarf Desert? A Scarcity of Wide Ultracool Binaries

dc.creatorAllen, Peter R.
dc.creatorKoerner, David W.
dc.creatorMcElwain, Michael W.
dc.creatorCruz, Kelle L.
dc.creatorReid, I. Neill
dc.date2006-10-25
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T11:26:14Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T11:26:14Z
dc.descriptionWe present the results of a deep-imaging search for wide companions to low-mass stars and brown dwarfs using NSFCam on IRTF. We searched a sample of 132 M7-L8 dwarfs to magnitude limits of $J \sim 20.5$ and $K \sim 18.5$, corresponding to secondary-primary mass ratios of $\sim 0.5$. No companions were found with separations between $2{\arcsec}$ to $31{\arcsec}$ ($\sim$40 AU to $\sim$1000 AU). This null result implies a wide companion frequency below 2.3% at the 95% confidence level within the sensitivity limits of the survey. Preliminary modeling efforts indicate that we could have detected 85% of companions more massive than $0.05 M_{\odot}$ and 50% above $0.03 M_{\odot}$.
dc.description27 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables: accepted to the Astronomical Journal
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0610763
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0610763
dc.identifierAstron.J.133:971-978,2007
dc.identifierdoi:10.1086/510346
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/195763
dc.subjectAstrophysics
dc.titleA New Brown Dwarf Desert? A Scarcity of Wide Ultracool Binaries
dc.typetext

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