A universal brown dwarf desert formed between planets and stars
Kaiming Cui, Guang-Yao Xiao, Fabo Feng, Beibei Liu, Sergei Nayakshin, Cassandra Hall, Kangrou Guo, Dong Lai, Masahiro Ogihara, Yicheng Rui, Alan P. Boss, R. Paul Butler, Yifan Xuan

TL;DR
This study analyzes a large sample of giant planets and brown dwarfs to identify a distinct brown dwarf desert around 30 Jupiter masses, supporting the idea of dual formation mechanisms for these objects.
Contribution
It provides the first rigorous statistical analysis of a large, unified sample, confirming the brown dwarf desert and proposing dual formation scenarios supported by population synthesis models.
Findings
Identification of a brown dwarf desert at ~30 M_J
Discovery of a new population of giant planets beyond the water-ice line
Evidence for two different formation pathways based on metallicity and eccentricity trends
Abstract
Giant planets and brown dwarfs play a crucial role in star and planet formation, as they are situated at the boundary between planets and stars with uncertain formation mechanisms. Previous observational searches for the formation boundary were hampered by the lack of large unified samples of wide-orbit giant planets and substellar companions. A combined analysis of radial velocity and astrometry mitigates this problem and has significantly enlarged the sample. Here we present a rigorous statistical analysis of the sample of 55 giant planets, brown dwarfs and low-mass stellar companions orbiting FGK stars. We quantitatively analyze the occurrence rates of brown dwarfs and identify a distinct brown dwarf desert at approximately , with no evidence of disappearance up to 20 au. Unlike previous studies that predicted a declining planet occurrence rate beyond the water-ice…
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Taxonomy
TopicsStellar, planetary, and galactic studies · Astronomy and Astrophysical Research · Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies
