e-ISSN: Pending
Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

A New Brown Dwarf Desert? A Scarcity of Wide Ultracool Binaries

Peter R. Allen; David W. Koerner; Michael W. McElwain; Kelle L. Cruz; I. Neill Reid · 2006 · arXiv

WASTE classifies this as Negative / Null Result Report · AI classification, approximate

The study found no significant effect — useful as a negative control or null benchmark for your own design.

The finding, in one line

This null result implies a wide companion frequency below 2.

Abstract (excerpt)

We present the results of a deep-imaging search for wide companions to low-mass stars and brown dwarfs using NSFCam on IRTF. We searched a sample of 132 M7-L8 dwarfs to magnitude limits of $J \sim 20.5$ and $K \sim 18.5$, corresponding to secondary-primary mass ratios of $\sim 0.5$. No companions were found with separations between $2{\arcsec}$ to $31{\arcsec}$ ($\sim$40 AU to $\sim$1000 AU). This null result implies a wide companion frequency below 2.3% at the 95% confidence level within the sensitivity limits of the survey. Preliminary modeling efforts indicate that we could have detected 85

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Metadata source: arXiv