Comprehensive characterisation of L subdwarfs

 Title: Comprehensive characterisation of L subdwarfs 

    Speaker: 张曾华 (Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias) 

 Time: Aug. 24(Wednesday) 13:00 

 Place: Room 701

    Abstract:  
L subdwarfs are metal-poor counterpart of L dwarfs in the Galactic halo and thick disk. Only about 40 L subdwarfs reported in the literatures. I have conducted a search for L subdwarf candidates within the UKIDSS and SDSS. 34 of my candidates were confirmed as L subdwarfs spectroscopically at optical and/or near infrared wavelengths with VLT, GTC and Magallen. I examined the spectral types and metallicity subclasses classification of known L subdwarfs, and established a new classification scheme of L subdwarfs. I estimate temperatures and metallicities of 22 late type M and L subdwarfs by comparing their spectra to BT-Settl models. I find that L subdwarfs have temperatures between 1500 K and 2700 K, which are higher than similarly-typed L dwarfs by around 100-400 K depending on different subclasses and subtypes. I constrained the metallicity ranges of subclasses of M, L and T subdwarfs. I also discussed the spectral type and absolute magnitude relationships for L and T subdwarfs. Then I will briefly introduce two of my observational programme on L subdwarfs. I followed up 18 L subdwarfs with X-shooter on the VLT for more detailed model comparison and radial velocity measurements. I am leading a 3-years programme to measure parallaxes of 20 L subdwarfs with the 10.4m GTC telescope (comparing only 6 L subdwarfs have parallaxes in the literature). This programme is involving 123 hours of GTC time, and completing in a year.  

About the speaker:  

Zenghua is a generic postdoctral fellow at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) in Tenerife of Spain since 2013. Zenghua did his PhD in astrophysics at the Centre for Astrophysics Research of the University of Hertfordshire from 2008 to 2012, and worked a year as a postdoc before he join the IAC. He obtained his MSc in astrophysics at the Yunnan Astronomical Observatory in 2008. Zenghua's research is focusing on metal-poor very low-mass stars and brownd dwarfs.  

Download attachments: