Searching for young planets with sparse aperture masking

Adam L. Kraus*, Michael J. Ireland, Frantz Martinache, James P. Lloyd

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference proceeding contribution

4 Citations (Scopus)
3 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

We describe an ongoing survey to directly detect substellar and planetary companions to nearby young stars. This survey uses adaptive optics and nonredundant aperture-masking interferometry to achieve typical contrast limits of ΔK ∼6 at the diffraction limit, probing a completely new regime of parameter space. These observations have revealed many new stellar companions, but only a few companions that might be brown dwarfs; this paucity resembles the so-called "brown dwarf desert" that has been observed by RV planet searches. The survey has not detected any extrasolar planets, despite mass detection limits as low as 7 M jup, yielding constraints on the population of extrasolar giant planets. Finally, we discuss some of the implications for protoplanetary disk evolution, including potential sources for gap formation and disk dissipation.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCool Stars, Stellar Systems And The Sun
Subtitle of host publicationProceedings of the 15th Cambridge Workshop on Cool Stars, Stellar Systems and the Sun
EditorsEric Stempels
Place of PublicationMelville, NY
PublisherAmerican Institute of Physics
Pages453-456
Number of pages4
Volume1094
ISBN (Print)9780735406278
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 16 Feb 2009
Externally publishedYes
Event15th Cambridge Workshop on Cool Stars, Stellar Systems and the Sun - St Andrews
Duration: 21 Jul 200825 Jul 2008

Publication series

NameAIP Conference Proceedings
PublisherAmerican Institute of Physics
Volume1094
ISSN (Print)0094-243X

Conference

Conference15th Cambridge Workshop on Cool Stars, Stellar Systems and the Sun
CitySt Andrews
Period21/07/0825/07/08

Bibliographical note

Copyright 2009 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 1094, p. 453-456) and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3099145.

Keywords

  • stars:formation
  • stars:pre-main sequence
  • planetary systems:formation
  • planetary systems:protoplanetary disks
  • binaries:visual
  • BROWN DWARF

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