Mergerburst transients of brown dwarfs with exoplanets

Ealeal Bear, Amit Kashi, Noam Soker

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

25 Scopus citations

Abstract

We explore the properties of an optical transient event formed by the destruction of a planet by a brown dwarf (BD) - a BD-planet mergerburst. When a massive planet approaches a BD towards a merging process it will be tidally destroyed and will form an accretion disc around the BD. The viscosity in the disc sets the characteristic time for the event - several days. We suggest that BD-planet mergerburst events have light curves resembling those of other intermediate luminosity optical transient events, such as V838 Mon, but at shorter time-scales and lower luminosities. With the high percentage coverage of the sky, we expect that such events will be detected in the near future.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1965-1970
Number of pages6
JournalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume416
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2011
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Accretion, accretion discs
  • Brown dwarfs
  • Planet-star interactions
  • Stars: flare

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