PI: Rui Li, University of Florida, firstname.lastname@example.org
Address: Department of Astronomy, 211 Bryant Space Science Center, Gainesville, FL 32608-2055, USA
CoI: Jian Ge, University of Florida
CoI: Bo Ma, University of Florida
CoI: Eric Peterson, University of Florida
Title: Tracing Metallicity of Brown Dwarf/Giant Planet Candidates from MARVELS using EXPERTS
Abstract: The SDSS-III MARVELS survey is a comprehensive radial velocity survey of 3,300 nearby F-K stars, between 7.6 < V < 12.0 in 2008-2012. Recently we obtained a sample of brown dwarf candidates from MARVELS survey. With this sample, we are able to start assembling statistically significant samples of systems to understand how various the orbital parameters of the candidates and the stellar parameters of their host stars are related. One of the robust relationship is that between the candidate properties and the metallicity, i.e. [Fe/H], of their host stars. Many spectroscopic studies indicate that stars with exoplanets tend to have a higher metallicity than stars without detected exoplanets (Fischer et al 2005). Since low-mass brown dwarfs may form as giant planets from the disk, we want to verify whether the stars with brown dwarf companions tend to have a higher metallicity. We propose to use EXPERT at the KPNO 2.1m to obtain high-resolution spectra of the host stars with these candidates. With these spectra we will be able to measure the metallicity and understand how the metallicity is related with the mass/orbital parameters of the brown dwarfs. Understanding this will also improving our understanding of the stellar properties in our sample, and therefore lead to a better knowledge of the mechanism of those brown dwarf formation.
National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 950 North Cherry Avenue, P.O. Box 26732, Tucson, Arizona 85726, Phone: (520) 318-8000, Fax: (520) 318-8360