Astrophysics and Astronomy Commons^™

Detection And Characterisation Of 54 Massive Companions With The Sophie Spectrograph: Seven New Brown Dwarfs And Constraints On The Brown Dwarf Desert, ‪Flavien Kiefer, Guillaume Hébrard, Johannes Sahlmann, Sérgio G. Sousa, Thierry Forveille, Nuno Santos, Michel Mayor, Magali Deleuil, Paul Anthony Wilson, Shweta Dalal, Rodrigo F. Díaz, Gregory W. Henry, Janis Hagelberg, Melissa J. Hobson, Olivier Demangeon, Vincent Bourrier, Xavier Delfosse, Luc Arnold, Nicola Astudillo-Defru, Jean-Luc Beuzit, Isabelle Boisse, Xavier Bonfils, Simon Borgniet, François Bouchy, B. Courcol, David Ehrenreich, Nathan Hara, Anne-Marie Lagrange, Christophe Lovis, Guillaume Montagnier, C. Moutou, Francesco Pepe, Christian Perrier, Javiera Rey, Alexandre Santerne, Damien Ségransan, Stephane Udry, Alfred Vidal-Madjar

Information Systems and Engineering Management Research Publications

Context. Brown dwarfs (BD) are substellar objects intermediate between planets and stars with masses of ~13–80 M_J. While isolated BDs are most likely produced by gravitational collapse in molecular clouds down to masses of a few M_J, a non-negligible fraction of low-mass companions might be formed through the planet-formation channel in protoplanetary discs. The upper mass limit of objects formed within discs is still observationally unknown, the main reason being the strong dearth of BD companions at orbital periods shorter than 10 yr, also known as the BD desert.

Aims. To address this question, we aim …