Substellar Multiplicity Throughout the Ages

Abstract

Substellar multiplicity is a key outcome of the formation process. The biggest challenge for the next decade will be to distinguish between the formation history, environmental conditions, and dynamical evolution leading to the least massive brown dwarfs and the most massive planets at the tail ends of their mass functions. In this white paper, we advocate for a comprehensive characterization of both the statistical distributions of the population of ultracool dwarf multiple systems and the fundamental properties of their individual components as a function of age. A space-based precision astrometry mission in near-infrared wavelengths would provide the necessary measurements to identify and characterize age-calibrated populations of multiple systems.