Interpretation of the Spectra Originating from the Photospheres Contaminated with Dust - Experience in L and T Dwarfs

Abstract

Recent observations revealed that the infrared colors of L and T dwarfs show a large variation at a given T_ eff and this result may imply that the thickness of the dust cloud is changing at a given T_ eff. Our Unified Cloudy Model (UCM), in which the dust cloud forms between the condensation temperature, T_cond, and the critical temperature, T_cr, is already prepared for such a new situation and can be used by simply changing T_cr at a given T_eff, instead of assuming a constant value of T_cr=1800K throughout as in our previous applications of the UCMs. However, the effects of T_eff and T_cr on individual spectra are difficult to discriminate, since the effect of T_eff at a fixed T_cr on one hand and the effect of T_cr at a fixed T_eff on the other have essentially the same effect on the spectra. For this reason, spectra of dusty dwarfs were in fact misinterpreted in general, also by ourselves. We show that the degeneracy of T_eff and T_cr can be removed to some extent by the analysis of the spectra transformed to the SEDs on an absolute scale. Our reanalysis of some spectra revealed that the L-T spectral sequence is not a sequence of T_eff, at least between middle L and early T types, but should be interpreted as a sequence of T_cr. In other words, the L-T spectral sequence has little to do with T_eff but reflects a change of the thickness of the dust cloud. Although this unexpected result is based on a limited sample, an odd ``brightening'' of the absolute magnitudes (e.g., M_J and M_bol) plotted against the L-T spectral types may also be a manifestation that the L-T spectral sequence is not a temperature sequence. :