A natural formation scenario for misaligned and short-period eccentric extrasolar planets

Recent discoveries of strongly misaligned transiting exoplanets pose a challenge to the established planet formation theory which assumes planetary systems to form and evolve in isolation. However, the fact that the majority of stars actually do form in star clusters raises the question how isolated forming planetary systems really are. Besides radiative and tidal forces the presence of dense gas aggregates in star-forming regions are potential sources for perturbations to protoplanetary discs or systems. Here we show that subsequent capture of gas from large extended accretion envelopes onto a passing star with a typical circumstellar disc can tilt the disc plane to retrograde orientation, naturally explaining the formation of strongly inclined planetary systems. Furthermore, the inner disc regions may become denser, and thus more prone to speedy coagulation and planet formation. Pre-existing planetary systems are compressed by gas inflows leading to a natural occurrence of close-in misaligned hot Jupiters and short-period eccentric planets. The likelihood of such events mainly depends on the gas content of the cluster and is thus expected to be highest in the youngest star clusters.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Updated to match published versio

Discovery of a Wide Substellar Companion to a Nearby Low-Mass Star

We report the discovery of a wide (135+/-25 AU), unusually blue L5 companion 2MASS J17114559+4028578 to the nearby M4.5 dwarf G 203-50 as a result of a targeted search for common proper motion pairs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Two Micron All Sky Survey. Adaptive Optics imaging with Subaru indicates that neither component is a nearly equal mass binary with separation > 0.18", and places limits on the existence of additional faint companions. An examination of TiO and CaH features in the primary's spectrum is consistent with solar metallicity and provides no evidence that G 203-50 is metal poor. We estimate an age for the primary of 1-5 Gyr based on activity. Assuming coevality of the companion, its age, gravity and metallicity can be constrained from properties of the primary, making it a suitable benchmark object for the calibration of evolutionary models and for determining the atmospheric properties of peculiar blue L dwarfs. The low total mass (M_tot=0.21+/-0.03 M_sun), intermediate mass ratio (q=0.45+/-0.14), and wide separation of this system demonstrate that the star formation process is capable of forming wide, weakly bound binary systems with low mass and BD components. Based on the sensitivity of our search we find that no more than 2.2% of early-to-mid M dwarfs (9.0 0.06 M_sun.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Interactions between brown-dwarf binaries and Sun-like stars

Several mechanisms have been proposed for the formation of brown dwarfs, but there is as yet no consensus as to which -- if any -- are operative in nature. Any theory of brown dwarf formation must explain the observed statistics of brown dwarfs. These statistics are limited by selection effects, but they are becoming increasingly discriminating. In particular, it appears (a) that brown dwarfs that are secondaries to Sun-like stars tend to be on wide orbits, a\ga 100\,{\rm AU} (the Brown Dwarf Desert), and (b) that these brown dwarfs have a significantly higher chance of being in a close (a\la 10\,{\rm AU}) binary system with another brown dwarf than do brown dwarfs in the field. This then raises the issue of whether these brown dwarfs have formed {\it in situ}, i.e. by fragmentation of a circumstellar disc; or have formed elsewhere and subsequently been captured. We present numerical simulations of the purely gravitational interaction between a close brown-dwarf binary and a Sun-like star. These simulations demonstrate that such interactions have a negligible chance ($<0.001$) of leading to the close brown-dwarf binary being captured by the Sun-like star. Making the interactions dissipative by invoking the hydrodynamic effects of attendant discs might alter this conclusion. However, in order to explain the above statistics, this dissipation would have to favour the capture of brown-dwarf binaries over single brown-dwarfs, and we present arguments why this is unlikely. The simplest inference is that most brown-dwarf binaries -- and therefore possibly also most single brown dwarfs -- form by fragmentation of circumstellar discs around Sun-like protostars, with some of them subsequently being ejected into the field.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, Accepted for publication in Astrophysics and Space Scienc

A Hybrid Scenario for the Formation of Brown Dwarfs and Very Low Mass Stars

We present a calculation of protostellar disk formation and evolution in which gaseous clumps (essentially, the first Larson cores formed via disk fragmentation) are ejected from the disk during the early stage of evolution. This is a universal process related to the phenomenon of ejection in multiple systems of point masses. However, it occurs in our model entirely due to the interaction of compact, gravitationally-bound gaseous clumps and is free from the smoothing-length uncertainty that is characteristic of models using sink particles. Clumps that survive ejection span a mass range of 0.08--0.35 $M_\odot$, and have ejection velocities $0.8 \pm 0.35$ km s$^{-1}$, which are several times greater than the escape speed. We suggest that, upon contraction, these clumps can form substellar or low-mass stellar objects with notable disks, or even close-separation very-low-mass binaries. In this hybrid scenario, allowing for ejection of clumps rather than finished protostars/proto--brown-dwarfs, disk formation and the low velocity dispersion of low-mass objects are naturally explained, while it is also consistent with the observation of isolated low-mass clumps that are ejection products. We conclude that clump ejection and the formation of isolated low mass stellar and substellar objects is a common occurrence, with important implications for understanding the initial mass function, the brown dwarf desert, and the formation of stars in all environments and epochs.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, to appear in The Astrophysical Journa

Radiative equilibrium in Monte Carlo radiative transfer using frequency distribution adjustment

The Monte Carlo method is a powerful tool for performing radiative equilibrium calculations, even in complex geometries. The main drawback of the standard Monte Carlo radiative equilibrium methods is that they require iteration, which makes them numerically very demanding. Bjorkman & Wood recently proposed a frequency distribution adjustment scheme, which allows radiative equilibrium Monte Carlo calculations to be performed without iteration, by choosing the frequency of each re-emitted photon such that it corrects for the incorrect spectrum of the previously re-emitted photons. Although the method appears to yield correct results, we argue that its theoretical basis is not completely transparent, and that it is not completely clear whether this technique is an exact rigorous method, or whether it is just a good and convenient approximation. We critically study the general problem of how an already sampled distribution can be adjusted to a new distribution by adding data points sampled from an adjustment distribution. We show that this adjustment is not always possible, and that it depends on the shape of the original and desired distributions, as well as on the relative number of data points that can be added. Applying this theorem to radiative equilibrium Monte Carlo calculations, we provide a firm theoretical basis for the frequency distribution adjustment method of Bjorkman & Wood, and we demonstrate that this method provides the correct frequency distribution through the additional requirement of radiative equilibrium. We discuss the advantages and limitations of this approach, and show that it can easily be combined with the presence of additional heating sources and the concept of photon weighting. However, the method may fail if small dust grains are included... (abridged)Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in New Astronom

Secular evolution of viscous and self-gravitating circumstellar discs

We add the effect of turbulent viscosity via the \alpha-prescription to models of the self-consistent formation and evolution of protostellar discs. Our models are non-axisymmetric and carried out using the thin-disc approximation. Self-gravity plays an important role in the early evolution of a disc, and the later evolution is determined by the relative importance of gravitational and viscous torques. In the absence of viscous torques, a protostellar disc evolves into a self-regulated state with disk-averaged Toomre parameter Q \sim 1.5-2.0, non-axisymmetric structure diminishing with time, and maximum disc-to-star mass ratio \xi = 0.14. We estimate an effective viscosity parameter \alpha_eff associated with gravitational torques at the inner boundary of our simulation to be in the range 10^{-4}-10^{-3} during the late evolution. Addition of viscous torques with a low value \alpha = 10^{-4} has little effect on the evolution, structure, and accretion properties of the disc, and the self-regulated state is largely preserved. A sequence of increasing values of \alpha results in the discs becoming more axisymmetric in structure, being more gravitationally stable, having greater accretion rates, larger sizes, shorter lifetimes, and lower disc-to-star mass ratios. For \alpha=10^{-2}, the model is viscous-dominated and the self-regulated state largely disappears by late times. (Abridged)Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Recent advances on IMF research

Here I discuss recent work on brown dwarfs, massive stars and the IMF in general. The stellar IMF can be well described by an invariant two-part power law in present-day star-formation events within the Local Group of galaxies. It is nearly identical in shape to the pre-stellar core mass function. The majority of brown dwarfs follow a separate IMF. Evidence from globular clusters and ultra-compact dwarf galaxies has emerged that IMFs may have been top heavy depending on the star-formation rate density. The IGIMF then ranges from bottom heavy at low galaxy-wide star formation rates to being top-heavy in galaxy-scale star bursts.Comment: 6 pages, LaTeX, to appear in The Labyrinth of Star Formation, 18-22 June 2012, Crete, (eds.) D. Stamatellos, S. Goodwin, and D. Ward-Thompson, Springer, in press; replaced version: very minor corrections plus the addition of reference Smith & Lucey (2013) on the bottom-heavy IMF in elliptical galaxie

A search for pre-substellar cores and proto-brown dwarf candidates in Taurus: multiwavelength analysis in the B213-L1495 clouds

In an attempt to study whether the formation of brown dwarfs (BDs) takes place as a scaled-down version of low-mass stars, we conducted IRAM30m/MAMBO-II observations at 1.2 mm in a sample of 12 proto-BD candidates selected from Spitzer/IRAC data in the B213-L1495 clouds in Taurus. Subsequent observations with the CSO at 350 micron, VLA at 3.6 and 6 cm, and IRAM30m/EMIR in the 12CO(1-0), 13CO(1-0), and N2H+(1-0) transitions were carried out toward the two most promising Spitzer/IRAC source(s), J042118 and J041757. J042118 is associated with a compact (<10 arcsec or <1400 AU) and faint source at 350 micron, while J041757 is associated with a partially resolved (~16 arcsec or ~2000 AU) and stronger source emitting at centimetre wavelengths with a flat spectral index. The corresponding masses of the dust condensations are ~1 and ~5 Mjup for J042118 and J041757, respectively. In addition, about 40 arcsec to the northeast of J041757 we detect a strong and extended submillimetre source, J041757-NE, which is not associated with NIR/FIR emission down to our detection limits, but is clearly detected in 13CO and N2H+ at ~7 km/s, and for which we estimated a total mass of ~100 Mjup, close to the mass required to be gravitationally bound. In summary, our observational strategy has allowed us to find in B213-L1495 two proto-BD candidates and one pre-substellar core candidate, whose properties seem to be consistent with a scaled-down version of low-mass stars.Comment: MNRAS, 424, 2778; corrected typos, mass estimate refined in Section 3.2.1 and Section 5.3; conclusions unchange

Disk masses in the embedded and T Tauri phases of stellar evolution

(Abridged). Motivated by a growing concern that masses of circumstellar disks may have been systematically underestimated by conventional observational methods, we present a numerical hydrodynamics study of time-averaged disk masses () around low-mass Class 0, Class I, and Class II objects. Mean disk masses (\overline{M}_d}) are then calculated by weighting the time-averaged disk masses according to the corresponding stellar masses using a power-law weight function with a slope typical for the Kroupa initial mass function of stars. Two distinct types of disks are considered: self-gravitating disks, in which mass and angular momentum are redistributed exclusively by gravitational torques, and viscous disks, in which both the gravitational and viscous torques are at work. We find that self-gravitating disks have mean masses that are slowly increasing along the sequence of stellar evolution phases. More specifically, Class 0/I/II self-gravitating disks have mean masses \overline{M}_d=0.09, 0.10, and 0.12 M_sun, respectively. Viscous disks have similar mean masses (\overline{M}_d=0.10-0.11 M_sun) in the Class 0/I phases but almost a factor of 2 lower mean mass in the Class II phase (\overline{M}_d,CII=0.06 M_sun). In each evolution phase, time-averaged disk masses show a large scatter around the mean value. Our obtained mean disk masses are larger than those recently derived by Andrews & Williams and Brown et al., regardless of the physical mechanisms of mass transport in the disk.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

AMI Large Array radio continuum observations of Spitzer c2d small clouds and cores

We perform deep 1.8 cm radio continuum imaging towards thirteen protostellar regions selected from the Spitzer c2d small clouds and cores programme at high resolution (25") in order to detect and quantify the cm-wave emission from deeply embedded young protostars. Within these regions we detect fifteen compact radio sources which we identify as radio protostars including two probable new detections. The sample is in general of low bolometric luminosity and contains several of the newly detected VeLLO sources. We determine the 1.8 cm radio luminosity to bolometric luminosity correlation, L_rad -L_bol, for the sample and discuss the nature of the radio emission in terms of the available sources of ionized gas. We also investigate the L_rad-L_IR correlation and suggest that radio flux density may be used as a proxy for the internal luminosity of low luminosity protostars.Comment: submitted MNRA