Interactions between brown-dwarf binaries and Sun-like stars

Several mechanisms have been proposed for the formation of brown dwarfs, but there is as yet no consensus as to which—if any—are operative in nature. Any theory of brown dwarf formation must explain the observed statistics of brown dwarfs. These statistics are limited by selection effects, but they are becoming increasingly discriminating. In particular, it appears (a) that brown dwarfs that are secondaries to Sun-like stars tend to be on wide orbits, a≳100 AU (the Brown Dwarf Desert), and (b) that these brown dwarfs have a significantly higher chance of being in a close (a≲10 AU) binary system with another brown dwarf than do brown dwarfs in the field. This then raises the issue of whether these brown dwarfs have formed in situ, i.e. by fragmentation of a circumstellar disc; or have formed elsewhere and subsequently been captured. We present numerical simulations of the purely gravitational interaction between a close brown-dwarf binary and a Sun-like star. These simulations demonstrate that such interactions have a negligible chance (<0.001) of leading to the close brown-dwarf binary being captured by the Sun-like star. Making the interactions dissipative by invoking the hydrodynamic effects of attendant discs might alter this conclusion. However, in order to explain the above statistics, this dissipation would have to favour the capture of brown-dwarf binaries over single brown-dwarfs, and we present arguments why this is unlikely. The simplest inference is that most brown-dwarf binaries—and therefore possibly also most single brown dwarfs—form by fragmentation of circumstellar discs around Sun-like protostars, with some of them subsequently being ejected into the field.