Proto-brown dwarf disks as products of protostellar disk encounters

The formation of brown dwarfs (BDs) via encounters between protostars has been confirmed with high-resolution numerical simulations with a restricted treatment of the thermal conditions. The new results indicate that young BDs formed this way are disklike and often reside in multiple systems. The newly formed proto-BD disks are up to 18 AU in size and spin rapidly, making small-scale bipolar outflows, fragmentation, and the possible formation …