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Description
Direct imaging provides a steady flow of newly discovered giant planets and brown dwarf companions. These multi-object systems can provide information about the formation of low-mass companions in wide orbits and/or speculate about possible migration scenarios. The accurate classification of the companions is crucial for testing formation pathways. In this work we characterize further the recently discovered candidate for a planetary-mass companion CS Cha b and determine if it is still accreting. MUSE is a 4-laser-adaptive-optics-assisted medium-resolution integral-field spectrograph in the optical part of the spectrum. We observed the CS Cha system to obtain the first spectrum of CS Cha b. The companion is characterized by modelling both the spectrum from 6300{AA}, to 9300{AA}, and the photometry using archival data from the visible to the near-infrared. We find evidence of accretion and outflow signatures in H{alpha} and OI emission. The atmospheric models with the highest likelihood indicate an effective temperature of 3450+/-50K with a logg of 3.6+/-0.5dex. Based on evolutionary models, we find that the majority of the object is obscured. We determine the mass of the faint companion with several methods to be between 0.07 Msun and 0.71M_{sun}_ with an accretion rate of dM/dt=4x10^-11^+/-0.4x10^-11^M_{sun}_/yr. Our results show that CS Cha B is most likely a mid M-type star that is obscured by a highly inclined disk, which has led to its previous classification by broadband NIR photometry as a planetary-mass companion. This shows that it is important and necessary to observe over a broad spectral range to constrain the nature of faint companions.
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