Exploring Brown Dwarf Disks: A 1.3 mm Survey in Taurus

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Abstract
We have carried out sensitive 1.3 mm observations of 20 young brown dwarfs in the Taurus star-forming region, representing the largest sample of young substellar objects targeted in a deep millimeter continuum survey to date. Under standard assumptions, the masses of brown dwarf disks range from ~10 AU; models with smaller disks cannot reproduce the mm fluxes even if they are very massive. This finding is in contrast to the results of some simulations of the ejection scenario for brown dwarf formation that suggest only ~5% of ejected objects would harbor disks larger than 10 AU. Our findings imply that ejection is probably not the dominant formation process, but may still be relevant for some brown dwarfs.