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We report the first results of our ongoing campaign to discover the first brown dwarfs (BD) in NGC 2264,
a young (3 Myr),
populous star forming region for which
our optical studies have revealed a very high density of potential candidates – 236 in <1 deg2 –
from the substellar limit down to at least ~20 MJup for zero reddening. Candidate BD
were first selected using wide field (I,z) band imaging with CFH12K, by reference to
current theoretical isochrones. Subsequently, 79
(33%) of the I,z sample were found to have
near-infrared 2MASS photometry (JHKs±0.3 mag or better), yielding dereddened magnitudes and allowing further investigation by
comparison with the location of NextGen and DUSTY isochrones in colour–colour and colour–magnitude
diagrams involving various combinations of I, J, H and Ks. We discuss
the status and potential substellarity of a number of relatively unreddened (A_{\rm v}\la5) likely low-mass members in our sample,
but in spite of the depth of our observations in I,z, we
are as yet unable to unambiguously identify substellar candidates using only 2MASS data. Nevertheless, there are excellent
arguments for considering two faint (observed I∼18.4 and 21.2) objects as cluster candidates with masses respectively at or rather below the
hydrogen burning limit. More current candidates
could be proven to be cluster members with masses around 0.1 M⊙ via gravity-sensitive spectroscopy, and deeper near-infrared imaging
will surely reveal a hitherto unknown population of young brown dwarfs
in this region, accessible to the next generation of deep near-infrared surveys
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