The Gaia Ultra-Cool Dwarf Sample -- II : Structure at the end of the main sequence

Abstract

We identify and investigate known late M, L and T dwarfs in the Gaia second data release. This sample is being used as a training set in the Gaia data processing chain of the ultra cool dwarfs work package. We find 695 objects in the optical spectral range M8 to T6 with accurate Gaia coordinates, proper motions, and parallaxes which we combine with published spectral types and photometry from large area optical and infrared sky surveys. We find that 100 objects are in 47 multiple systems, of which 27 systems are published and 20 are new. These will be useful benchmark systems and we discuss the requirements to produce a complete catalog of multiple systems with an ultra cool dwarf component. We examine the magnitudes in the Gaia passbands and find that the GBP magnitudes are unreliable and should not be used for these objects. We examine progressively redder colour magnitude diagrams and see a notable increase in the main sequence scatter and a bivariate main sequence for old and young objects. We provide an absolute magnitude spectral sub-type calibration for G and GRP passbands along with linear fits over the range M8 L8 for other passbands.