JWST/NIRCam discovery of the first Y+Y brown dwarf binary: WISE J033605.05$-$014350.4

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of the first Y+Y brown dwarf binary system using JWST/NIRCam, providing insights into ultracool dwarf formation and binary characteristics at the lowest temperatures.

Contribution

It presents the first detection and characterization of a Y dwarf binary system with detailed measurements of separation, mass, and orbital period, advancing understanding of ultracool binary formation.

Findings

Binary separation of about 1 au

Companion mass estimated at 4-12.5 Jupiter masses

Orbital period estimated at 5-9 years

Abstract

We report the discovery of the first brown dwarf binary system with a Y dwarf primary, WISE J033605.05$-$014350.4, observed with NIRCam on JWST with the F150W and F480M filters. We employed an empirical point spread function binary model to identify the companion, located at a projected separation of 84 milliarcseconds, position angle of 295 degrees, and with contrast of 2.8 and 1.8 magnitudes in F150W and F480M, respectively. At a distance of 10$\,$pc based on its Spitzer parallax, and assuming a random inclination distribution, the physical separation is approximately 1$\,$au. Evolutionary models predict for that an age of 1-5 Gyr, the companion mass is about 4-12.5 Jupiter masses around the 7.5-20 Jupiter mass primary, corresponding to a companion-to-host mass fraction of $q=0.61\pm0.05$. Under the assumption of a Keplerian orbit the period for this extreme binary is in the range of 5-9 years. The system joins a small but growing sample of ultracool dwarf binaries with effective temperatures of a few hundreds of Kelvin. Brown dwarf binaries lie at the nexus of importance for understanding the formation mechanisms of these elusive objects, as they allow us to investigate whether the companions formed as stars or as planets in a disk around the primary.