The First Y Dwarf Data from JWST Show that Dynamic and Diabatic Processes Regulate Cold Brown Dwarf Atmospheres

Abstract

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is now observing Y dwarfs, the coldest known brown dwarfs, with effective temperatures T _eff ≲ 475 K. The first published observations provide important information: not only is the atmospheric chemistry out of equilibrium, as previously known, but the pressure–temperature profile is not in the standard adiabatic form. The rapid rotation of these Jupiter-size, isolated, brown dwarfs dominates the atmospheric dynamics, and thermal and compositional changes disrupt convection. These processes produce a colder lower atmosphere, and a warmer upper atmosphere, compared to a standard adiabatic profile. Leggett et al. presented empirical models where the pressure–temperature profile was adjusted so that synthetic spectra reproduced the 1 ≲ λ ( μ m) ≲ 20 spectral energy distributions of brown dwarfs with 260 ≤ T _eff (K) ≤ 540. We show that spectra generated by these models fit the first JWST Y dwarf spectrum better than standard-adiabat models. Unexpectedly, there is no 4.3 μ m PH _3 feature in the JWST spectrum and atmospheres without phosphorus better reproduce the 4 μ m flux peak. Our analysis of new JWST photometry indicates that the recently discovered faint secondary of the WISE J033605.05-014350AB system has T _eff ≈ 295 K, making it the first dwarf in the significant luminosity gap between the 260 K WISE J085510.83-071442.5, and all other known Y dwarfs. The adiabat-adjusted disequilibrium-chemistry models are recommended for analyses of all brown dwarfs cooler than 600 K, and a grid is publicly available. Photometric color transformations are provided in an appendix.

Keywords

• Y dwarfs
• Brown dwarfs
• Atmospheric structure
• Infrared astronomy
• Atmospheric dynamics
• Atmospheric composition