Searching for Infrared Auroral Activity on Brown Dwarfs with JWST Observations : The Search for H3+ Emission Lines

Sammanfattning

The search for auroral activity outside of Earth has been the object of many studies. With aurora being found on planets in the Solar System and even on a comet, the next logical step was searching for auroral activity on brown dwarfs. The strongest emission of the auroral activity is usually the H+3 emissions, which is why this thesis focuses on searching James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data for H+3 emission lines. The chosen targets were two brown dwarf systems, one binary system, and one non-binary system. The brown dwarf spectra were compared to spectrum from auroral regions of Jupiter. An H+3 emission model was used to identify the location of potential emission lines. No emission lines were found in the brown dwarf spectra. The expected power output of the H+3 emission was estimated to be lower than the measured thermal emissions of the brown dwarf and likely not detectable in the data. This could explain why no emission lines were found.