2024ApJ...972..172P -
Astrophys. J., 972, 172 (2024/September-2)
Retrieving Young Cloudy L Dwarfs: A Nearby Planetary-mass Companion BD+60 1417B and its Isolated Red Twin W0047.
PHILLIPS C.L., FAHERTY J.K., BURNINGHAM B., VOS J.M., GONZALES E.C., GRIFFITH E.J., ALEJANDRO MERCHAN S., CALAMARI E., VISSCHER C., MORLEY C.V., WHITEFORD N., GAARN J., ILYIN I., STRASSMEIER K. and WANG J.
Abstract (from CDS):
We present an atmospheric retrieval analysis on a set of young, cloudy, red L dwarfs-CWISER J124332.12+600126.2 (BD+60 1417B) and WISEP J004701.06+680352.1 (W0047)-using the Brewster retrieval framework. We also present the first elemental abundance measurements of the young K-dwarf (K0) host star, BD+60 1417, using high-resolution (R = 50,000) spectra taken with the Potsdam Echelle Polarimetric and Spectroscopic Instrument on the Large Binocular Telescope. In the complex cloudy L-dwarf regime the emergence of condensate cloud species complicates retrieval analysis when only near-infrared data are available. We find that for both L dwarfs in this work, despite testing three different thermal profile parameterizations we are unable to constrain reliable abundance measurements and thus the carbon-to-oxygen ratio. While we cannot conclude what the abundances are, we can conclude that the data strongly favor a cloud model over a cloudless model. We note that the difficulty in retrieval constraints persists regardless of the signal-to-noise ratio of the data examined (S/N ∼ 10 for CWISER BD+60 1417B and 40 for WISEP W0047). The results presented in this work provide valuable lessons about retrieving young, low-surface-gravity cloudy L dwarfs. This work provides continued evidence of missing information in models and the crucial need for JWST to guide and inform retrieval analysis in this regime.
Abstract Copyright:
© 2024. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
Journal keyword(s):
Brown dwarfs - Atmospheric composition - Substellar companion stars - Fundamental parameters of stars - L dwarfs - Stellar abundances
Simbad objects:
6
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