Program: GN-2014A-Q-41

Young (~10--100 Myr) moving groups (YMGs) are coeval, comoving groups of stars that have migrated from their birthsites after formation. They provide a valuable evolutionary link between ongoing star formation in molecular clouds (~1 Myr) and old field stars (>1 Gyr). Previous searches for YMGs based on optical surveys such as Hipparcos and the Palomar Sky Survey were insensitive to the lowest mass members (<0.5 Msun) meaning that ~75% of the YMG census remained unknown. We propose to increase the search volume for low-mass YMG members by a factor of ~50--100 and uncover the missing substellar members down to ~0.01 Msun (~10 Mjup) using a novel combination of photometry and proper motions from Pan-STARRS-1 (PS1). PS1 is unique because its large area coverage encompasses the sparsely-distributed YMGs and it is sensitive to low-mass YMG members within 100 pc. We expect to significantly increase the census of young brown dwarfs with known ages and distances. We propose for low-resolution NIR spectroscopy (Gemini/GNIRS) of candidate young brown dwarfs in order to determine their youth and spectral type. Upon completion, our survey will yield a large sample of brown dwarf benchmarks to empirically define the gravity (age) dependence of spectral type. In addition, we will determine the substellar IMF in YMGs for the first time. Finally, our new brown dwarfs will be valuable targets for future surveys of brown dwarf binarity and young exoplanet characterization.