A HERSCHEL SEARCH FOR COLD DUST IN BROWN DWARF DISKS: FIRST RESULTS

Journal Article · Sun Jan 15 04:00:00 EST 2012 · Astrophysical Journal Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/2041-8205/744/1/L1· OSTI ID:22047241

Harvey, Paul M; Evans, II, Neal J ^[1]; Henning, Thomas ^[2]; Menard, Francois; Pinte, Christophe ^[3]; Wolf, Sebastian; Yao, Liu ^[4]; Cieza, Lucas A ^[5]; Pascucci, Ilaria ^[6]; Merin, Bruno ^[7]

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1. Astronomy Department, University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station C1400, Austin, TX 78712-0259 (United States)
2. Max-Planck-Institut for Astronomy, Koenigstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg (Germany)
3. UJF-Grenoble 1/CNRS-INSU, Institut de Planetologie et d'Astrophysique (IPAG) UMR 5274, BP 53, 38041 Grenoble cedex 9 (France)
4. Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, University of Kiel, Leibnizstr. 15, 24098 Kiel (Germany)
5. Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822 (United States)
6. Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Department of Planetary Sciences, University of Arizona, 1629 East University Boulevard, Tucson, AZ 85721 (United States)
7. Herschel Science Centre, SRE-SDH, ESA, P.O. Box 78, 28691 Villanueva de la Canada, Madrid (Spain)

We report initial results from a Herschel program to search for far-infrared emission from cold dust around a statistically significant sample of young brown dwarfs. The first three objects in our survey are all detected at 70 {mu}m, and we report the first detection of a brown dwarf at 160 {mu}m. The flux densities are consistent with the presence of substantial amounts of cold dust in the outer disks around these objects. We modeled the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) with two different radiative transfer codes. We find that a broad range of model parameters provide a reasonable fit to the SEDs, but that the addition of our 70 {mu}m, and especially the 160 {mu}m, detection enables strong lower limits to be placed on the disk masses since most of the mass is in the outer disk. We find likely disk masses in the range of a few Multiplication-Sign 10{sup -6} to 10{sup -4} M{sub Sun }. Our models provide a good fit to the SEDs and do not require dust settling.

• OSTI ID: 22047241
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal Letters, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Letters Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 744; ISSN 2041-8205
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ASTROPHYSICS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
COSMIC DUST
DETECTION
DWARF STARS
ENERGY SPECTRA
FAR INFRARED RADIATION
FLUX DENSITY
MASS
PHOTON EMISSION
PROTOPLANETS
RADIANT HEAT TRANSFER
STARS