Disentangling the Signatures of Blended-light Atmospheres in L/T Transition Brown Dwarfs

We present a technique to identify spectrophotometrically variable L7-T3 brown dwarfs with single-epoch, low-resolution, near-infrared SpeX spectra. We calculated spectral indices on known variable brown dwarfs and used them to select 11 index-index parameter spaces where known variables can be distinguished from the rest of the general population of brown dwarfs. We find 62 candidate variables, 12 of which show significant variability amplitude in independent photometric monitoring surveys. This technique constitutes the first formal method to identify a time-dependent effect such as variability from peculiarities in their integrated light spectra. This technique will be a useful tool to prioritize targets for future photometric and spectroscopic monitoring in the era of the James Webb Space Telescope and 30 m-class telescopes.

Automated summary

This study presents a technique to identify spectrophotometrically variable L7-T3 brown dwarfs using single-epoch, low-resolution, near-infrared SpeX spectra. The authors calculated spectral indices on known variable brown dwarfs and used them to select 11 index-index parameter spaces where known variables can be distinguished from the rest of the general population of brown dwarfs. They identified 62 candidate variables, 12 of which showed significant variability amplitude in independent photometric monitoring surveys. This technique will be useful for prioritizing targets for future photometric and spectroscopic monitoring.