TY - JOUR
T1 - Brown Dwarf Retrievals on FIRE!
T2 - Atmospheric Constraints and Lessons Learned from High Signal-to-noise Medium-resolution Spectroscopy of a T9 Dwarf
AU - Hood, Callie E.
AU - Fortney, Jonathan J.
AU - Line, Michael R.
AU - Faherty, Jacqueline K.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the anonymous reviewer for their thoughtful comments and suggestions that have improved the quality of this work. We acknowledge use of the lux supercomputer at UC Santa Cruz, funded by NSF MRI grant AST 1828315. This work benefited from the 2022 Exoplanet Summer Program in the Other Worlds Laboratory (OWL) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, a program funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation. M.R.L. acknowledges support from NASA XRP grant 80NSSC19K0293. J.J.F. acknowledges support from NSF Award No. 1909776 and NASA Award No. 80NSSC22K0142 as well as the Simons Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
PY - 2023/8/1
Y1 - 2023/8/1
N2 - Brown dwarf spectra offer vital testbeds for our understanding of the chemical and physical processes that sculpt substellar atmospheres. Recently, atmospheric retrieval approaches have been successfully applied to low-resolution (R ∼ 100) spectra of L, T, and Y dwarfs, yielding constraints on the chemical abundances and temperature structures of these atmospheres. Medium-resolution (R ∼ 103) spectra of brown dwarfs offer additional insight, as molecular features are more easily disentangled and the thermal structure of the upper atmosphere is better probed. We present results from a GPU-based retrieval analysis of a high signal-to-noise, medium-resolution (R ∼ 6000) FIRE spectrum from 0.85 to 2.5 μm of the T9 dwarf UGPS J072227.51-054031.2. At 60× higher spectral resolution than previous brown dwarf retrievals, a number of novel challenges arise. We examine the effect of different opacity sources, in particular for CH4. Furthermore, we find that flaws in the data like errors from order stitching can bias our constraints. We compare these retrieval results to those for an R ∼ 100 spectrum of the same object, revealing how constraints on atmospheric abundances and temperatures improve by an order of magnitude or more with increased spectral resolution. In particular, we can constrain the abundance of H2S, which is undetectable at lower spectral resolution. While these medium-resolution retrievals offer the potential of precise, stellar-like constraints on atmospheric abundances (∼0.02 dex), our retrieved radius is unphysically small ( R = 0.50 − 0.01 + 0.01 R Jup), indicating shortcomings with our modeling framework. This work is an initial investigation into brown dwarf retrievals at medium spectral resolution, offering guidance for future ground-based studies and JWST observations.
AB - Brown dwarf spectra offer vital testbeds for our understanding of the chemical and physical processes that sculpt substellar atmospheres. Recently, atmospheric retrieval approaches have been successfully applied to low-resolution (R ∼ 100) spectra of L, T, and Y dwarfs, yielding constraints on the chemical abundances and temperature structures of these atmospheres. Medium-resolution (R ∼ 103) spectra of brown dwarfs offer additional insight, as molecular features are more easily disentangled and the thermal structure of the upper atmosphere is better probed. We present results from a GPU-based retrieval analysis of a high signal-to-noise, medium-resolution (R ∼ 6000) FIRE spectrum from 0.85 to 2.5 μm of the T9 dwarf UGPS J072227.51-054031.2. At 60× higher spectral resolution than previous brown dwarf retrievals, a number of novel challenges arise. We examine the effect of different opacity sources, in particular for CH4. Furthermore, we find that flaws in the data like errors from order stitching can bias our constraints. We compare these retrieval results to those for an R ∼ 100 spectrum of the same object, revealing how constraints on atmospheric abundances and temperatures improve by an order of magnitude or more with increased spectral resolution. In particular, we can constrain the abundance of H2S, which is undetectable at lower spectral resolution. While these medium-resolution retrievals offer the potential of precise, stellar-like constraints on atmospheric abundances (∼0.02 dex), our retrieved radius is unphysically small ( R = 0.50 − 0.01 + 0.01 R Jup), indicating shortcomings with our modeling framework. This work is an initial investigation into brown dwarf retrievals at medium spectral resolution, offering guidance for future ground-based studies and JWST observations.
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U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/ace32e
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/ace32e
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85168592753
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 953
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 2
M1 - 170
ER -