The limiting effects of dust in brown dwarf model atmospheres

We present opacity sampling model atmospheres, synthetic spectra, and color s for brown dwarfs and very low mass stars in the following two limiting ca ses of dust grain formation: (1) Inefficient gravitational settling (i.e., the dust is distributed according to the chemical equilibrium predictions) and (2) efficient gravitational settling (i.e., the dust forms and depletes refractory elements from the gas, but their opacity does not affect the th ermal structure). The models include the formation of over 600 gas-phase sp ecies and 1000 liquids and crystals and the opacities of 30 different types of grains including corundum the magnesium aluminum spinel MgAl2O4, iron, enstatite (MgSiO3), forsterite (Mg2SiO4), amorphous carbon, SiC, and a numb er of calcium silicates. The models extend from the beginning of the grain formation regime well into the condensation regime of water ice (T-eff = 30 00-100 K) and encompass the range of log g = 2.5-6.0 at solar metallicity. We find that silicate dust grains can form abundantly in the outer atmosphe ric layers of red and brown dwarfs with a spectral type later than M8. The greenhouse effects of dust opacities provide a natural explanation for the peculiarly red spectroscopic distribution of the latest M dwarfs and young brown dwarfs. The grainless (cond) models, on the other hand, correspond cl osely to methane brown dwarfs such as Gliese 229B. We also discover that th e lambda lambda 5891, 5897 Na I D and lambda lambda 7687, 7701 K I resonanc e doublets play a critical role in T dwarfs, in which their red wings defin e the pseudocontinuum from the I to the Z bandpass.