Mergerburst transients of brown dwarfs with exoplanets

Abstract

We explore the properties of an optical transient event formed by the destruction of a planet by a brown dwarf (BD) - a BD-planet mergerburst. When a massive planet approaches a BD towards a merging process it will be tidally destroyed and will form an accretion disc around the BD. The viscosity in the disc sets the characteristic time for the event - several days. We suggest that BD-planet mergerburst events have light curves resembling those of other intermediate luminosity optical transient events, such as V838 Mon, but at shorter time-scales and lower luminosities. With the high percentage coverage of the sky, we expect that such events will be detected in the near future. © 2011 The Authors Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2011 RAS.