The abundance of brown dwarfs

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  • 8 September 1998
Abstract
The amount of mass contained in low-mass objects is investigated anew. Instead of using a mass-luminosity relation to convert a luminosity function to a mass function, I predict the mass-luminosity relation from assumed mass functions and the luminosity functions of Jahreiss & Wielen (1997) and Gould et al (1997). Comparison of the resulting mass-luminosity relations with data from binary stars constrains the permissible mass functions. I conclude that under favourable assumptions a power-law mass function could accommodate twice as much mass in substellar objects as in conventional stars. Since this is insufficient to account for the number of detected microlensing events towards the Magellanic Clouds, more complex mass functions must be considered.

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