New brown dwarf discs in Upper Scorpius

For 116 objects originally identified in UKIDSS, the majority of them not studied in previous publications, we obtain photometry from the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer data base. The resulting colour-magnitude and colour-colour plots clearly show two separate populations of objects, interpreted as brown dwarfs with discs (class II) and without discs (class III).

We identify 27 class II brown dwarfs, 14 of them not previously known. This disc fraction (27 out of 116, or 23%) among brown dwarfs was found to be similar to results for K/M stars in Upper Scorpius, suggesting that the lifetimes of discs are independent of the mass of the central object for low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. 5 out of 27 discs (19%) lack excess at 3.4 and 4.6{mu}m and are potential transition discs (i.e. are in transition from class II to class III).