A Near-Infrared Spectral Library of Very Young Brown Dwarfs and Planetary-Mass Objects in the Orion Nebula Cluster

TL;DR

This study provides a near-infrared spectral library of very young brown dwarfs and planetary-mass objects in the Orion Nebula Cluster, revealing their spectral diversity, accretion activity, and evolutionary spectral changes.

Contribution

It presents medium-resolution JHK spectra of 25 young substellar objects, confirming their youth, membership, and accretion features, and illustrates spectral evolution from 1 to 200 million years.

Findings

Confirmed youth and cluster membership of objects using spectral indices.

Detected accretion signatures in objects as low as 7 M_Jup.

Illustrated spectral evolution of planetary-mass objects over time.

Abstract

Age-benchmark brown dwarfs' and planetary-mass objects' spectroscopy is key to characterize substellar evolution. In this paper we present the JHK medium resolution (R~3000) spectra of 25 7-75 M_Jup (spectral types L3.0-M6.0) brown dwarfs and planetary-mass objects in the Orion Nebula Cluster obtained with MOSFIRE installed at the W. M. Keck I telescope. We obtained the spectral types of the targets in our sample using template brown dwarf and planetary-mass objects' spectra. We confirmed their extreme youth (<5 Myr) and membership to the cluster using spectral indices, and the diversity of their spectra even for targets with similar spectral types. Six of our targets presented Pa-beta and Bra-gamma emission lines, suggesting the existence of accreting protoplanetary disks to objects with masses as low as 7 M_Jup. After analyzing the emission lines of those objects, and measuring their accretion rates, we compared them to those of stars, brown dwarfs and planetary-mass objects, confirming that planetary-mass young objects deplete their disks quickly at young ages. Finally, we illustrate the spectral evolution of a 7-10 M_Jup planetary-mass object through its life from 1-3 Myr to 200 Myr old using one of our latest spectra type targets, and other targets from the literature with older age, but similar estimated masses. The spectra are publicly available for the community's use as data behind the figures.