Subaru/IRD high-resolution spectroscopy of a T-type brown dwarf and investigation of its atmospheric properties with high-resolution spectrum model ExoJAX
Speaker: Yui Kawashima
Abstract:
While brown dwarf atmospheres share composition and temperature with those of extrasolar gas giant planets, in general, brown dwarfs are observable with a higher signal-to-noise ratio when compared to exoplanets. Thus, the observation of brown dwarf atmospheres helps us establish our understanding of various processes in the atmospheres of such temperature and composition, including chemistry, thermal structure, dynamics, and cloud formation. Also, their high-resolution spectra serve as excellent templates for the observational validation of the molecular line lists at such high temperatures. The accuracy of molecular line lists holds the key to detecting chemical species in exoplanet atmospheres, which are often observed with a lower signal-to-noise ratio.
Recently, we observed the high-resolution spectrum of a T6.5-type brown dwarf Gl 229B with the InfraRed Doppler (IRD) spectrograph mounted on the Subaru Telescope. We have constrained its atmospheric properties, such as the molecular abundances and thermal structure, using an inverse-problem approach with our high-resolution spectrum model ExoJAX (Kawahara, Kawashima et al. 2022). We have also investigated the possibility of inferring the object mass using the embedded information on collision-induced absorption uniquely accessible by high-resolution spectroscopy. Furthermore, we have revealed that in some wavelength regions, specific molecular line lists do not match the observed absorption features.