  Based on high-resolution UVES spectra we found that the radial velocity (RV)
dispersion of nine of twelve known young bona fide and candidate brown dwarfs
in the Cha I dark cloud is 2.0 km/s, i.e. significantly smaller than the RV
dispersion of T Tauri stars in Cha I (3.6 km/s) and only slightly larger than
the dispersion of the surrounding molecular gas (1.2 km/s) (Mizuno et al.
1999). This result indicates that the majority of these brown dwarfs are not
ejected with high velocity out of a dense region as proposed by some formation
scenarios for brown dwarfs. The mean RV values are consistent with the objects
being kinematic members of Cha I. The RV dispersion of the T Tauri stars
confined to the Cha I region is based on a compilation of T Tauri stars with
known RVs from the literature plus three T Tauri stars observed with UVES and
unpublished RVs for nine T Tauri stars. Time-resolved spectroscopy revealed RV
variations for five out of nine of the bona fide and candidate brown dwarfs in
Cha I, which could be due to orbiting planets or surface features. Furthermore
we derived rotational velocities vsin(i) and the Lithium 6708 \AA equivalent
width.
