http://arxiv.org/abs/1808.07798
“Free-floating, non-deuterium-burning, substellar objects” are isolated bodies of a few Jupiter masses found in very young open clusters and associations, nearby young moving groups and in the immediate vicinity of the Sun. They are neither brown dwarfs nor planets. I look over their nomenclature, history of discovery, sites of detection, formation mechanisms and future directions of research. Most free-floating, non-deuterium-burning, substellar objects share the same formation mechanism as low-mass stars and brown dwarfs, but there are still a few caveats, such as the value of the opacity mass limit, the minimum mass at which an isolated body can form via turbulent fragmentation from a cloud. The least massive free-floating substellar objects found to date have masses of about 0.004 Msol, but current and future surveys should aim at breaking this record. For that, we may need LSST, Euclid and WFIRST.
J. Caballero
Fri, 24 Aug 18
41/45
Comments: Published as an invited review in special issue of Geosciences “Detection and Characterization of Extrasolar Planets” (this http URL). This manuscript is being refereed: prompt comments and suggestions to caballero@cab.inta-csic.es are more than welcome