New brown dwarf disks in Upper Scorpius observed with WISE

TL;DR

This study uses WISE data to identify and analyze brown dwarf disks in Upper Scorpius, revealing similar disk lifetimes to low-mass stars and a rapid transition phase.

Contribution

First comprehensive WISE-based census of brown dwarf disks in Upper Scorpius, identifying new disk-bearing objects and comparing disk evolution with low-mass stars.

Findings

23% of brown dwarfs have disks, similar to low-mass stars.

Approximately 19% of disks are transition disks.

Disk evolution timescales are less than 0.4 Myr for transition phase.

Abstract

We present a census of the disk population for UKIDSS selected brown dwarfs in the 5-10 Myr old Upper Scorpius OB association. For 116 objects originally identified in UKIDSS, the majority of them not studied in previous publications, we obtain photometry from the WISE database. The resulting colour-magnitude and colour-colour plots clearly show two separate populations of objects, interpreted as brown dwarfs with disks (class II) and without disks (class III). We identify 27 class II brown dwarfs, 14 of them not previously known. This disk fraction (27 out of 116 or 23%) among brown dwarfs was found to be similar to results for K/M stars in Upper Scorpius, suggesting that the lifetimes of disks are independent of the mass of the central object for low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. 5 out of 27 disks (19%) lack excess at 3.4 and 4.6 microns and are potential transition disks (i.e. are in transition from class II to class III). The transition disk fraction is comparable to low-mass stars. We estimate that the timescale for a typical transition from class II to class III is less than 0.4 Myr for brown dwarfs. These results suggest that the evolution of brown dwarf disks mirrors the behaviour of disks around low-mass stars, with disk lifetimes on the order of 5-10 Myr and a disk clearing timescale significantly shorter than 1 Myr.