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An Improbable Solution to the Underluminosity of 2M1207B: A Hot Protoplanet Collision Afterglow

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Eric E. Mamajek1 and Michael R. Meyer2

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We introduce an alternative hypothesis to explain the very low luminosity of the cool (L-type) companion to the ~25 MJup, ~8 Myr old brown dwarf 2M1207A. Recently, Mohanty et al. found that effective temperature estimates for 2M1207B (1600 ± 100 K) are grossly inconsistent with its lying on the same isochrone as the primary, being a factor of ~10 underluminous at all bands between I (0.8 μm) and L' (3.6 μm). Mohanty et al. explain this discrepancy by suggesting that 2M1207B is an 8 MJup object surrounded by an edge-on disk comprised of large dust grains producing 2.5 mag of achromatic extinction. We offer an alternative explanation: the apparent flux reflects the actual source luminosity. Given the temperature, we infer a small radius (~49,000 km), and for a range of plausible densities, we estimate a mass < MJup. We suggest that 2M1207B is a hot protoplanet collision afterglow and show that the radiative timescale for such an object is gtrsim1% the age of the system. If our hypothesis is correct, the surface gravity of 2M1207B should be an order of magnitude lower than that predicted by Mohanty et al.


Subject headings

circumstellar matter; planetary systems: formation; planetary systems: protoplanetary disks; stars: individual (2MASSW J1207334–393254); stars: low-mass, brown dwarfs; stars: pre-main sequence


Dates

Issue 2 (2007 October 20)

Received 2007 August 7, accepted for publication 2007 September 4

Published 2007 October 4



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