Program: GN-2008B-Q-21

Using mid-infrared images obtained with the {\it Spitzer Space Telescope}, I have identified several objects in nearby star-forming regions that may be young brown dwarfs with circumstellar disks. Some of these candidates could be the least massive class~II (star+disk) and class~I (star+disk+envelope) sources found to date. I propose to obtain optical and near-infrared spectra of these candidates to verify that they are brown dwarfs rather than background sources, such as red galaxies. The confirmed brown dwarfs will be used to study the structure and evolution of circumstellar disks and envelopes around brown dwarfs through modeling of their spectral energy distributions and followup high-resolution imaging with adaptive optics. These results will also help test the embryo-ejection model for the formation of brown dwarfs, which predicts that brown dwarfs should have small disks and should not exist as isolated protostellar objects.