A Hubble Space Telescope ACS Search for Brown Dwarf Binaries in the Pleiades Open Cluster

Abstract

We present the results of a high-resolution imaging survey for brown dwarf binaries in the Pleiades open cluster. The observations were carried out with the Advance Camera for Surveys onboard the Hubble Space Telescope. Our sample consists of 15 bona-fide brown dwarfs. We confirm 2 binaries and detect their orbital motion, but we did not resolve any new binary candidates in the separation range between 5.4AU and 1700AU and masses in the range 0.035--0.065~Msun. Together with the results of our previous study (Martin et al., 2003), we can derive a visual binary frequency of 13.3$^{+13.7}_{-4.3}$\% for separations greater than 7~AU masses between 0.055--0.065~M$_{\sun}$ and mass ratios between 0.45--0.9$<q<$1.0. The other observed properties of Pleiades brown dwarf binaries (distributions of separation and mass ratio) appear to be similar to their older counterparts in the field.