In the presented work, a population of twelve very young
bona fide and candidate brown dwarfs in the ChaI star forming cloud (ChaHa1-12)
was studied observationally in terms of their kinematic properties,
the occurrence of multiple systems among them as well as their rotational characteristics.
Based on high-resolution spectra taken for nine out of the twelve objects
with UVES at the VLT, radial and rotational velocities have been measured with high accuracy.
A kinematic study of the sample showed that their radial velocity dispersion
is relatively small (2.2 kms). It is significantly smaller than
the radial velocity dispersion of the T~Tauri stars in the field
(3.6 kms) and slightly larger than that one of the surrounding molecular gas (1.2 kms).
This result indicates that the studied brown dwarfs are not ejected during their formation
with velocities large than ~2 kms as proposed in recent formation scenarios.
The brown dwarfs may have larger 3D velocities.
However, brown dwarfs
ejected during the early accretion phase in directions with
a significant fraction perpendicular to the line-of-sight, would have flown out
of the field a long time ago.
By means of time-resolved UVES spectra, a radial velocity survey for close companions
to the targets was conducted. In addition, a direct imaging survey for wide
companions was carried out with the WFPC camera on board
the HST, with FORS at the VLT as well as with SofI at the NTT.
With these two complementary search methods, a wide range of possible companion
separations has been covered.
For brown dwarf companions (> 13 M_Jup)
to the targets, separations < 3 AU and between 50 and 1000 AU were covered.
With more restricted separations (< 0.1 AU and 300-1000 AU) the surveys
were sensitive also to companion masses down to 1 M_Jup.
HST images of ChaHa2 hint at a binary system
comprised of two approximately equal-mass companions with a separation of ~30 AU.
No further indications for companions have been found in the images.
Furthermore,
the radial velocities of the targets turned out to be rather constant setting upper
limits for the mass Msini of possible companions to 0.1 M_Jup
to 2 M_Jup
These findings hint at a rather low (smaller or equal 10%)
multiplicity fraction of the studied brown dwarfs.
Furthermore, a photometric monitoring campaign of the targets
yielded the determination of rotational periods for
ChaHa2, 3 and 6 in the range
of 2.2 to 3.4 days. These are the first rotational periods for very young
brown dwarfs and among the first for brown dwarfs at all.
They are complemented by measurements of
rotational velocities vsini from UVES spectra.
The observations show that brown dwarfs at an age of 1-5 Myr
display surface spots like T Tauri stars and are moderately fast rotators
in contrast to rapidly rotating old brown dwarfs
consistent with them being in an early contracting stage.
A comparison with rotational periods from the literature
indicates that most of the acceleration of
brown dwarfs takes place in the first 30 million years or less of their lifetime.