J/ApJ/953/170ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/953/170CDSHood C.E.Fortney J.J.Line M.R.Faherty J.K.2025-11-04T08:11:43Z2025-11-04T09:00:08ZCDS support team

CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France

cds-question@unistra.frbrown-dwarfst-dwarfsinfrared-astronomyspectroscopyBrown dwarf spectra offer vital testbeds for our understanding of the chemical and physical processes that sculpt substellar atmospheres. Recently, atmospheric retrieval approaches have been successfully applied to low-resolution (R~100) spectra of L, T, and Y dwarfs, yielding constraints on the chemical abundances and temperature structures of these atmospheres. Medium-resolution (R~10^3^) spectra of brown dwarfs offer additional insight, as molecular features are more easily disentangled and the thermal structure of the upper atmosphere is better probed. We present results from a GPU-based retrieval analysis of a high signal-to-noise, medium-resolution (R~6000) FIRE spectrum from 0.85 to 2.5{mu}m of the T9 dwarf UGPS_J072227.51-054031.2. At 60x higher spectral resolution than previous brown dwarf retrievals, a number of novel challenges arise. We examine the effect of different opacity sources, in particular for CH_4_. Furthermore, we find that flaws in the data like errors from order stitching can bias our constraints. We compare these retrieval results to those for an R~100 spectrum of the same object, revealing how constraints on atmospheric abundances and temperatures improve by an order of magnitude or more with increased spectral resolution. In particular, we can constrain the abundance of H_2_S, which is undetectable at lower spectral resolution. While these medium-resolution retrievals offer the potential of precise, stellar-like constraints on atmospheric abundances (~0.02dex), our retrieved radius is unphysically small (R=0.50_-0.01_^+0.01^R_Jup_), indicating shortcomings with our modeling framework. This work is an initial investigation into brown dwarf retrievals at medium spectral resolution, offering guidance for future ground-based studies and JWST observations.2023ApJ...953..170Hhttps://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/953/170CatalogResearchIsServedByTAP VizieR generic servicerelated-toVI/133 : A variationally computed hot NH3 line list - BYTe (Yurchenko+, 2011)J/other/ARA+A/43.195 : L and T dwarf stars (Kirkpatrick, 2005)J/AJ/137/1 : PMs and astrometry of late-type dwarfs (Faherty+, 2009)J/ApJ/752/56 : BDKP. III. Plxs for 70 ultracool dwarfs (Faherty+, 2012)J/ApJS/214/25 : Rosseland & Planck gaseous mean opacities (Freedman+, 2014)J/MNRAS/440/1649 : ExoMol line lists for CH4 (Yurchenko+, 2014)J/A+A/589/A21 : K-H_2_ line shapes for cool BDs spectra (Allard+, 2016)J/ApJS/225/10 : Kinematic analysis of M7-L8 dwarfs (Faherty+, 2016)J/ApJ/856/23 : BANYAN. XI. The BANYAN {Sigma} algorithm (Gagne+, 2018)J/MNRAS/490/4638 : ExoMol molecular line lists. XXXV. NH3 (Coles+, 2019)J/AJ/160/63 : IR sp. of 5 BDs with Gemini North IRS (Miles+, 2020)J/ApJ/918/11 : IR photometry of late-type brown dwarfs (Leggett+, 2021)J/ApJ/940/164 : Distance-calibrated SED of Gl 229B (Calamari+, 2022)J/AJ/164/155 : K-band sp. of substellar companion VHS1256b (Hoch+, 2022)https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.htmlhttps://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/953/170https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/953/170http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/953/170https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/ApJ/953/170https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/ApJ/953/170http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/ApJ/953/170GETtext/xml+votablehttps://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tapInfrareddefaultJ/ApJ/953/170/fig1The FIRE spectrum of UGPS J072227.51-054031.2recnoRecord number assigned by the VizieR team. Should Not be used for identification.meta.recordintlambda[0.8/2.5] Wavelengthumem.wldoubleOFlux[-5.3e-07/9.5e-07] Original flux (1)W.m**-2.m**-1phot.flux;spect.line;em.IRdoublee_OFlux[1e-23/8e-07] Uncertainty in OFlux (1)W.m**-2.m**-1stat.error;phot.flux;spect.linedoubleNFlux[-2.4e-09/4.3e-09] New flux (2)W.m**-2.m**-1phot.flux;spect.line;em.IRdoublee_NFlux[4.4e-26/3.6e-09] Uncertainty in NFlux (2)W.m**-2.m**-1stat.error;phot.flux;spect.linedouble