Dynamical Masses of Eps Ind B and C: Two Massive Brown Dwarfs at the Edge of the Stellar-Substellar Boundary

TL;DR

This study precisely measures the masses of two brown dwarfs near the stellar-substellar boundary, revealing unexpectedly high masses that challenge existing models of substellar evolution.

Contribution

It provides the first dynamical mass measurements for Epsilon Indi B and C using combined astrometric data and MCMC analysis, highlighting discrepancies with current evolutionary models.

Findings

Dynamical masses are 75.0 and 70.1 Mjup for B and C.

Masses are higher than typical for substellar objects.

Models with lower atmospheric opacities better match the results.

Abstract

We report individual dynamical masses for the brown dwarfs Epsilon Indi B and C, which have spectral types of T1.5 and T6, respectively, measured from astrometric orbit mapping. Our measurements are based on a joint analysis of astrometric data from the Carnegie Astrometric Planet Search and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory Parallax Investigation as well as archival high resolution imaging, and use a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. We find dynamical masses of 75.0+-0.82 Mjup for the T1.5 B component and 70.1+-0.68 Mjup for the T6 C component. These masses are surprisingly high for substellar objects and challenge our understanding of substellar structure and evolution. We discuss several evolutionary scenarios proposed in the literature and find that while none of them can provide conclusive explanations for the high substellar masses, evolutionary models incorporating lower atmospheric opacities come closer to approximating our results. We discuss the details of our astrometric model, its algorithm implementation, and how we determine parameter values via Markov Chain Monte Carlo Bayesian inference.