Infrared Spectroscopy of Substellar Objects in Orion

Abstract

We present broad band spectra of a sample of 21 low luminosity sources in the Trapezium Cluster, with masses in the range 0.008 - 0.10 Msun (assuming an age of 1 Myr). These were selected for low extinction in most cases and are located west of the brighter nebulosity. The spectra are in the H bandpass (1.4-1.95 um) and K bandpass (1.9-2.5 um) also for most of the brighter sources, with a resolution of 50 nm. They were taken with UKIRT using the CGS4 spectrometer. Absorption by water vapour bands is detected in all the substellar candidates except one, which is a highly reddened object with strong H2 emission and an anomalously blue (I-J) colour, implying that it is a very young cluster member with circumstellar matter. The observation of prominent water vapour bands confirms the low Effective Temperatures implied by our (I-J) colour measurements in an earlier paper and would imply late M or L spectral types if these were older field dwarfs. However, the profiles of the H bandpass spectra are very different from those of field dwarfs with similar water absorption strength, demonstrating that they are not foreground or background objects. In addition, the CO absorption bands at 2.3 um and the NaI absorption feature at 2.21 um are very weak for such cool sources. All these features are quite well reproduced by the AMES-Dusty-1999 model atmospheres of Allard et al.(2000,2001), and arise from the low gravities predicted for the Trapezium sources. This represents a new proof of the substellar status of our sources, independent of the statistical arguments for low contamination, which are reexamined here. The very late spectral types of the planetary mass objects and very low mass brown dwarfs demonstrate that they are cluster members, since they are too luminous to be field dwarfs in the background.