ON THE BINARY FREQUENCY OF THE LOWEST MASS MEMBERS OF THE PLEIADES WITH HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE WIDE FIELD CAMERA 3

ABSTRACT We present the results of a Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) imaging survey of 11 of the lowest mass brown dwarfs in the Pleiades known (25-40 MJup). These objects represent the predecessors to T dwarfs in the field. Using a semi-empirical binary point-spread function (PSF)...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Astrophysical journal 2015-05, Vol.804 (1), p.1-10
Main Authors: Garcia, E. V., Dupuy, Trent J., Allers, Katelyn N., Liu, Michael C., Deacon, Niall R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Angular resolution
ASTROPHYSICS, COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
binaries: general
BINARY STARS
Brown dwarf stars
brown dwarfs
CAMERAS
DIFFRACTION
DWARF STARS
Field cameras
Hubble Space Telescope
MASS
Mass ratios
Mathematical analysis
methods: observational
PROBES
RESOLUTION
SENSITIVITY
Separation
SPACE
STAR CLUSTERS
stars: low-mass
techniques: photometric
TELESCOPES
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Summary:ABSTRACT We present the results of a Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) imaging survey of 11 of the lowest mass brown dwarfs in the Pleiades known (25-40 MJup). These objects represent the predecessors to T dwarfs in the field. Using a semi-empirical binary point-spread function (PSF)-fitting technique, we are able to probe to 0 03 (0.75 pixel), better than 2x the WFC3/UVIS diffraction limit. We did not find any companions to our targets. From extensive testing of our PSF-fitting method on simulated binaries, we compute detection limits which rule out companions to our targets with mass ratios of 0.7 and separations 4 AU. Thus, our survey is the first to attain the high angular resolution needed to resolve brown dwarf binaries in the Pleiades at separations that are most common in the field population. We constrain the binary frequency over this range of separation and mass ratio of 25-40 MJup Pleiades brown dwarfs to be
ISSN:0004-637X
1538-4357
1538-4357
DOI:10.1088/0004-637X/804/1/65