论文标题
知情的系统方法来识别可变的中期和晚期矮人
Informed systematic method to identify variable mid and late-T dwarfs
论文作者
论文摘要
大多数棕色矮人在不同波长范围内显示出某种水平的光度法或光谱光度法变异性。这种可变性使我们能够追踪具有辐射转移模型和映射代码的可变棕色矮人的3D大气结构和直接成像的系外行星。然而,迄今为止,我们没有一种知情方法来预选棕色矮人,这可能显示出较高的可变性幅度用于彻底的可变性研究。在这项工作中,我们设计并测试了近红外光谱指数,以预选最可能的变量中和晚期矮人,它们在有效的温度下与直接成像的系外行星重叠。我们使用时间分辨的近红外哈勃太空望远镜宽场摄像头3光谱T6.5矮人,2mass J22282889--431026,以设计我们的新型频谱指数。我们在26 T5.5--T7.5近红外SPEX/IRTF光谱上测试了这些光谱指数,并提供了八个新的Mid-t-T可变候选者。我们估计样品的可变性为$ 38^{+4} _ { - 30} $%,这与Metchev等提供的可变性分数一致。 Al,(2015年)中期至晚矮人。此外,我们的SPEX光谱样品中三个以前已知的变量中有两个被我们的索引标记为可变候选者。同样,我们的样本中的所有七个已知不变均被我们的索引标记为不可变化的对象。这些结果表明,我们的光谱指数可能用于查找可变的中期和晚棕色矮人变量。这些指数将来可能至关重要,是为可变性研究选择凉爽直接成像的系外行星。
The majority of brown dwarfs show some level of photometric or spectro-photometric variability in different wavelength ranges. This variability allow us to trace the 3D atmospheric structures of variable brown dwarfs and directly-imaged exoplanets with radiative-transfer models and mapping codes. Nevertheless, to date, we do not have an informed method to pre-select the brown dwarfs that might show a higher variability amplitude for a thorough variability study. In this work, we designed and tested near-infrared spectral indices to pre-select the most likely variable mid- and late-T dwarfs, which overlap in effective temperatures with directly-imaged exoplanets. We used time-resolved near-infrared Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3 spectra of a T6.5 dwarf, 2MASS J22282889--431026, to design our novel spectral indices. We tested these spectral indices on 26 T5.5--T7.5 near-infrared SpeX/IRTF spectra, and we provided eight new mid- and late-T variable candidates. We estimated the variability fraction of our sample in $38^{+4}_{-30}$%, which agrees with the variability fractions provided by Metchev, et. al, (2015) for mid-to late-T dwarfs. In addition, two of the three previously known variables in our SpeX spectra sample are flagged as variable candidates by our indices. Similarly, all seven known non-variable in our sample are flagged as non-variable objects by our indices. These results suggest that our spectral indices might be used to find variable mid- and late-T brown dwarf variables. These indices may be crucial in the future to select cool directly-imaged exoplanets for variability studies.