On the origin and nature of brown dwarfs and massive planets [Elektronische Ressource] / vorgelegt von Ingo Thies

Ingo Thies

Sujets

• Astronomie
• Physik

Informations

• Publié par: rheinische_friedrich-wilhelms-universitat_bonn
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 16
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

On the origin and nature of brown
dwarfs and massive planets
Dissertation
zur
Erlangung des Doktorgrades (Dr. rer. nat)
der
Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftlichen Fakult at
der
Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universit at Bonn
vorgelegt von
Ingo Thies
aus
Niebull
Bonn, 2010Angefertigt mit Genehmigung der Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftlichen Fakult at der
Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universit at Bonn.
1. Referent: Prof. Dr. P. Kroupa
2.t: Prof. Dr. R. Izzard
Tag der Promotion: 9. Februar 2011
Erscheinungsjahr: 2011I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge.
For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating
progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scienti c
research.
Albert Einstein
To all the people who will have left
this universe before the universe
will leave usSummary
In this thesis the apparent peculiarities of brown dwarfs (BDs) are pointed out which
force us to treat them as a population apart from, but yet still related to the stellar
population. In particular, the properties that make BDs so special are deduced from
the observational evidence in Chapter 1: 1. The brown dwarf desert, i.e. the apparent
dearth of substellar, non-planetary companions to stars, 2. the truncated distribution
of the semi-major axes of BD-BD binaries (Fig. 1.1), 3. the unusually top-heavy mass
ratio distribution of BD-BD binaries, compared to star-star binaries (Fig. 1.11), and
4. the theoretical di culties to explain a star-like, i.e. isolated formation scenario for
BDs (Adams & Fatuzzo 1996; Goodwin & Whitworth 2007). These combined facts
e ectively rule out star-like formation as the predominant mechanism of BD formation.
In addition, some fraction of very-low-mass stars may also have a non-star-like origin.
As an immediate consequence, a separate population, here called BD-like, is introduced.
Although the present observational data do not yet allow a precise determination of
the mass range of this population, a steep descent of the BD-like initial mass function
between 0.1 and 0.2 M as well as a steep onset of the stellar IMF slightly below the
hydrogen-burning mass,m = 0:075M , appears to be in good agreement with the lowerH
end of the observational mass function if it has been corrected for unresolved binaries
(see Section 1.2.2). This two-populations model results necessarily in a discontinuity in
the overall IMF of BDs and stars together. This discontinuity may be hidden in the
observed mass function unless the mass function is corrected for unseen binaries.
In Chapter 2 the issue is revised for the case of a high abundance of BD-BD binaries.
It is shown that the discontinuity persists even if a star-like BD-BD binary fraction of
up to 60 % is assumed. This further supports the two-populations model.
In Chapter 3 a probable formation scenario of BDs (as well as for massive gas planets)
is presented. Earlier work by Stamatellos et al. (2007) and subsequent studies had shown
that fragmentation of massive circumstellar disc beyond 100 AU is a valid mechanism to
form substellar companions. My research now shows that less massive (and thus more
frequent) discs can also fragment upon a tidal perturbation. While direct hydrodynamic
perturbation in disc-disc collisions (Shen et al. 2010) requires two colliding massive
discs, rendering such a scenario highly improbable, a tidal perturbation by a low-mass
star with no disc or only a negligibly small disc (i.e. a typical protoplanetary disc in
contrast to a massive extended one) appears to be reasonably probable for encounter
distances around 500 AU, as estimated by Thies et al. (2005) and brie y revisited in
Section 3.2 in Chapter 3.This thesis is based on the following publications:
• Thies & Kroupa 2007, ApJ, 671, pp. 767{780. A Discontinuity in the Low-Mass
Initial Mass Function(Chapter 1),
• Thies & Kroupa, 2007 MNRAS, 390, pp. 1200{1206. A discontinuity in the low-
mass IMF - the case of high multiplicity(Chapter 2), and
• Thies et al., 2010 ApJ, 717, pp. 577-585. Tidally Induced Brown Dwarf and Planet
Formation in Circumstellar Disks(Chapter 3).
Some preliminary work has also been published in Thies, Kroupa & Theis 2005 MNRAS,
364, pp. 961-970. Induced planet formation in stellar clusters: a parameter study of
star-disc encounters.
Supplementary content like movies from our calculations can be downloaded from the
AIfA download page,
http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~webaiub/german/downloads.phpContents
Summary 5
Introduction 1
1 Browndwarfsandvery-low-massstars{dotheyformaseparatepopulation? 5
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 The IMF for individual stars and systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.1 De nition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2.2 Unresolved Binaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.2.3 The System Mass Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.3 Computational Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.3.1 The Parameter Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
21.3.2 Minimisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.3.3 Error Estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.4.1 The IMF for BDs and Stars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.4.2 BD to Star Ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.4.3 Binary Fraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
1.5 Discussion: Brown dwarfs as a separate population? . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.5.1 An Apparent Discontinuity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.5.2 Implications for the Formation History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
1.5.3 Embryo Ejection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
1.5.4 Disk Fragmentation and Binary Disruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
1.5.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
1.6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2 A discontinuity in the low-mass IMF { the case of high multiplicity 39
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.2 Brown dwarfs as a separate population . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.2.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.2.2 A short review of binarity analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.3 IMF basics and computational method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
2.4.1 IMF tting parameters for di erent BD binary fractions . . . . . 45
2.4.2 The discontinuity in the low-mass IMF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.4.3 IMF slope and BD-to-star ratio in relation to the stellar density . 50
iContents
2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3 Tidally induced brown dwarf and planet formation in circumstellar discs 53
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.2 Model basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.2.1 Encounter probability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.2.2 Disc model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.3 Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.3.1 Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.3.2 Radiative transfer model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.3.3 Overview of Calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.4.1 General ndings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.4.2 Binary formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
3.4.3 The role of eccentricity and inclination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.5.1 How often do such encounters occur? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
3.5.2 Consequences for planet formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.6 Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Outlook 75
Bibliography 77
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