The lithium depletion boundary and the age of the Hyades cluster

TL;DR

This study extends the lithium depletion boundary method to determine the age of the Hyades cluster at approximately 650 million years, using spectroscopic data of brown dwarf members to compare with evolutionary models.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the lithium depletion boundary method can be applied to older stellar populations than previously established, specifically to the Hyades cluster.

Findings

LDB age of 650±70 Myr for the Hyades

Detection of lithium only in the faintest, coolest brown dwarfs

Consistent results with advanced evolutionary models

Abstract

Determination of the lithium depletion boundary (LDB), i.e., the observational limit below which the cores of very low-mass objects do not reach high enough temperature for Li destruction, has been used to obtain ages for several open clusters and stellar associations younger than 200 Myr, which until now has been considered as the practical upper limit on the range of applicability of this method. In this work we show that the LDB method can be extended to significant older ages than previously thought. Intermediate resolution optical spectra of six L-type candidate members in the Hyades cluster obtained using OSIRIS at the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias are presented. The Li~I 670.8~nm resonance doublet is clearly detected only in the two faintest and coolest of these objects, which are classified as L3.5 to L4 brown dwarf cluster members with luminosities around 10$^{-4}$ solar. Lithium depletion factors are estimated for our targets with the aid of synthetic spectra and they are compared with predictions from evolutionary models. A LDB age of 650$\pm$70 Myr for the Hyades provides a consistent description of our data using a set of state-of-the-art evolutionary models for brown dwarfs calculated by \citet{2015A&A..577..42}.