Paper detail

Angular momentum and disk evolution in very low mass systems

This review summarises recent observational results regarding the evolution of angular momentum and disks in brown dwarfs. The observations clearly show that brown dwarfs beyond ages of 10 Myr are exclusively fast rotators and do not spin down with age. This suggests that rotational braking by magnetic winds becomes very inefficient or ceases to work in the substellar regime. There is, however, some evidence for braking by disks during the first few Myrs in the evolution, similar to stars. Brown dwarf disks turn out to be scaled down versions of circumstellar disks, with dust settling, grain growth, and in some cases cleared out inner regions. The global disk properties roughly scale with central object mass. The evolutionary timescales in substellar disks are entirely consistent with what is found for stars, which may be challenging to understand. Given these findings, it is likely that brown dwarfs are able to form miniature planetary systems.