Published in

Zenodo, 2016

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.59193

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Radial Velocity Variables Among Ultracool Spectral Binary Candidates

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Question mark in circle
Preprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Postprint: policy unknown
Question mark in circle
Published version: policy unknown

Abstract

Dozens of ultracool stars and brown dwarfs have been identified as candidate binary systems on the basis of peculiarities in their infrared spectra and/or colors. This detection method permits the discovery of short-period systems straddling the hydrogen burning mass limit, including P < 1 year binaries amenable to orbit measurement through radial velocity and astrometric monitoring. We report the discovery of several new radial velocity variables among sources observed with Keck/NIRSPEC. Using a forward-modeling approach, we are able to obtain velocities with < 0.5 km/s precision for M, L and T dwarfs, as well as rotational velocities and estimates of effective temperature and surface gravity. We report a complete radial velocity orbit for the L4+T5 binary SDSS J0805+4812AB, which has a period of 2.0 yr, semi-major axis of 0.74 AU, eccentricity of 0.46, and substellar component masses, with the primary near the lithium-burning mass limit. We also report the discovery of the first T dwarf radial velocity variable. We highlight several sources with long-term variations which may be resolvable with follow-up high-resolution imaging, and examine the distribution of rotational velocities in our broader sample.

Beta version