Physical Properties of the Coolest Brown Dwarfs

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Brown dwarfs are key laboratories for understanding the differences between the smallest stars and the largest extrasolar planets. This program will expand our understanding of the coldest known brown dwarfs through a major observational program to determine their physical properties down to about 5 times the mass of Jupiter. Undergraduate and graduate students will develop expertise in two key areas of ground-based astronomy, namely wide-field astrometry and laser guide star adaptive optics. In parallel, the PI will formalize and enhance a professional development initiative to teach graduate students the soft skills needed for long-term success. This effort is geared towards enhancing students as budding researchers, helping them navigate the complexities of academia, and increasing retention along the career pipeline.This observational program will use high-precision infrared astrometry to measure distances, and thus absolute magnitudes and luminosities, for a well-defined sample of the coolest brown dwarfs. High angular resolution adaptive optics imaging will establish the multiplicity properties of these objects and yield the coolest known binaries. Follow-up characterization of the binaries will result in resolved spectrophotometry and dynamical masses, enabling the strongest tests to date of substellar evolutionary models and ultracool atmospheres.