Brown dwarf surface gravities with Keck/NIRSPEC Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Martin E.C.
  2. Mace G.N.
  3. McLean I.S.
  4. Logsdon S.E.
  5. Rice E.L.,Kirkpatrick J.D.
  6. Burgasser A.J.
  7. McGovern M.R.
  8. Prato L.
  9. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

We combine 131 new medium-resolution (R~2000) J-band spectra of M, L, and T dwarfs from the Keck NIRSPEC Brown Dwarf Spectroscopic Survey (BDSS) with 97 previously published BDSS spectra to study surface-gravity-sensitive indices for 228 low-mass stars and brown dwarfs spanning spectral types M5-T9. Specifically, we use an established set of spectral indices to determine surface gravity classifications for all of the M6-L7 objects in our sample by measuring the equivalent widths (EW) of the K I lines at 1.1692, 1.1778, and 1.2529{mu}m, and the 1.2{mu}m FeH_J_ absorption index. Our results are consistent with previous surface gravity measurements, showing a distinct double peak-at ~L5 and T5-in K I EW as a function of spectral type. We analyze the K I EWs of 73 objects of known ages and find a linear trend between log(Age) and EW. From this relationship, we assign age ranges to the very low gravity, intermediate gravity, and field gravity designations for spectral types M6-L0. Interestingly, the ages probed by these designations remain broad, change with spectral type, and depend on the gravity-sensitive index used. Gravity designations are useful indicators of the possibility of youth, but current data sets cannot be used to provide a precise age estimate.

Keywords
  1. infrared-astronomy
  2. spectroscopy
  3. line-intensities
  4. stellar-spectral-types
  5. stellar-ages
  6. t-dwarfs
  7. surveys
  8. brown-dwarfs
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2017ApJ...838...73M
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IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/838/73
Document Object Identifer DOI
doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.18380073

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History

2017-12-06T14:10:27Z
Resource record created
2017-12-06T14:10:27Z
Created
2018-02-05T07:32:46Z
Updated

Contact

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CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
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cds-question@unistra.fr