Evidence for a Developing Gap in a 10 Myr Old Protoplanetary Disk

By N. Calvet, P. D’Alessio, L. Hartmann, D. Wilner, A. Walsh, M. Sitko. 2002

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We have developed a physically self-consistent model of the disk around the nearby 10 Myr old star TW Hya that matches the observed spectral energy distribution and 7 mm images of the disk. The model requires both significant dust-size evolution and a partially evacuated inner disk region, as predicted by theories of planet formation. The outer disk, which extends to at least 140 AU in radius, is very optically thick at infrared wavelengths and quite massive (~0.06 M☉) for the relatively advanced age of this T Tauri star. This implies long viscous and dust evolution timescales, although dust must have grown to sizes of the order of ~1 cm to explain the submillimeter and millimeter spectral slopes. In contrast, the negligible near-infrared excess emission of this system requires that the disk be optically thin inside ≲4 AU. This inner region cannot be completely evacuated; we need ~0.5 lunar mass of ~1 μm particles remaining to produce the observed 10 μm silicate emission. Our model requires a distinct transition in disk properties at ~4 AU separating the inner and outer disks. The inner edge of the optically thick outer disk must be heated almost frontally by the star to account for the excess flux at mid-infrared wavelengths. We speculate that this truncation of the outer disk may be the signpost of a developing gap due to the effects of a growing protoplanet; the gap is still presumably evolving because material still resides in it, as indicated by the silicate emission, the molecular hydrogen emission, and the continued accretion onto the central star (albeit at a much lower rate than typical of younger T Tauri stars). Thus, TW Hya may become the Rosetta stone for our understanding of the evolution and dissipation of protoplanetary disks.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Spectroscopy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/37424ab5711bc26428c2ac4643da593f20b15f96

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Citations in the corpus

Protoplanetary disc evolution and dispersal: the implications of X-ray photoevaporation (2010, background): “Furthermore, there have been several observations of discs thought to be caught in the act of clearing (e.g Calvet et al. 2002; Najita et al. 2007); these ‘transition’ discs show a deficit in emission at near-IR (NIR) wavelengths compared to a primordial optically thick disc (one that is optically…”
Disks in Transition in the Taurus Population: Spitzer IRS Spectra of GM Aurigae and DM Tauri (2005, background): “6 National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 950 North Cherry Avenue, Tuc- son, AZ 85719. has evolved into an outer optically thick disk and an inner optically thin disk populated by a small amount of micron-size particles (Calvet et al. 2002, hereafter C02; Uchida et al. 2004).”
UNVEILING THE STRUCTURE OF PRE-TRANSITIONAL DISKS (2010, methodology): “To do this we use veiling measurements in the K-band to extract the near-infrared (-IR) excess emission of these objects and then fit this emission with disk models (D’Alessio et al. 2005; Calvet et al. 2002).”
Demographics of Transition Objects (2007, background): “(2) The dynamical clearing of a large gap by a Jovian mass planet (e.g., Skrutskie et al 1990; Marsh & Mahoney 1992; Calvet et al. 2002; Rice et al. 2003; D’Alessio et al. 2005; Calvet et al. 2005; Quillen et al. 2004).”
Dynamics of Protoplanetary Disks (2010, background): “…single massive planet, which opens a gap in the gas disk via the action of gravitational torques while allowing some gas to flow past the planet toward the star, could account for the observed properties of some transition disk sources (Calvet et al. 2002, Lubow & D’Angelo 2006, Rice et al. 2003b).”
A Spitzer View of Protoplanetary Disks in the γ Velorum Cluster (2008, background): “We show in Figure 4 the location of four well known transitional disks in Taurus, Chameleon, and the TW Hya association: TW Hyd (4) , GM Aur (5), Coku Tau (6) and CS Cha (7) (Calvet et al. 2002, 2005; D’Alessio et al. 2005b; Espaillat et al. 2007a).”
AN INFRARED/X-RAY SURVEY FOR NEW MEMBERS OF THE TAURUS STAR-FORMING REGION (2009, background): “An SED of this kind indicates the presence of a disk with an inner hole, which is known as a transitional disk (Calvet et al. 2002, 2005; D’Alessio et al. 2005).”
Three Radial Gaps in the Disk of TW Hydrae Imaged with SPHERE (2016, background): “Based on its small near-infrared excess TW Hya was identified as a “transition disk” with an inner hole of ≈ 4 au in the optically thick dust distribution, with additional optically thin dust at smaller radii (Calvet et al. 2002).”
Dust Growth and Settling in Protoplanetary Disks and Disk Spectral Energy Distributions. I. Laminar Disks (2005, background): “The rapid dust growth in inner regions might also be responsible for inner holes identified by Calvet et al. (2002) in TW Hydra and by Bouwman et al. (2003) in HD 1000546.”
THE TW Hya DISK AT 870 μm: COMPARISON OF CO AND DUST RADIAL STRUCTURES (2011, methodology): “As might be expected from its assumption of a “steady” accretion disk structure (i.e., with a large, positive surface density gradient), the Calvet et al. (2002) model exhibits the same type of behavior as Models sA/B or pA/B: it agrees with the data on large scales (<100 kλ), but significantly…”
DUST FILTRATION BY PLANET-INDUCED GAP EDGES: IMPLICATIONS FOR TRANSITIONAL DISKS (2012, background): “Pre-transitional disks still have some infrared emission from warm, optically-thick dust near the star (Espaillat et al. 2007, 2008, 2010), while transitional disks only have near- and mid-infrared emission from optically-thin dust (Calvet et al. 2002, 2005; Espaillat et al. 2010).”
CONSTRAINTS ON THE RADIAL VARIATION OF GRAIN GROWTH IN THE AS 209 CIRCUMSTELLAR DISK (2012, background): “Observations of dust in disks from sub-mm to cm wavelengths (Testi et al. 2001; Calvet et al. 2002; Testi et al. 2003; Natta & Testi 2004; Wilner et al. 2005; Rodmann et al. 2006; Lommen et al. 2009; Ricci et al. 2010a,b) have provided strong evidence for grain growth in disks.”
Disk Evolution in Cep OB2: Results from the Spitzer Space Telescope (2006, background): “…disk’’ objects, systems with strong mid- to far-infrared disk emission but very weak or absent near-infrared emission, and sometimes strongly reduced or absent gaseous accretion, such as TW Hya (Calvet et al. 2002; Uchida et al. 2004) and CoKu Tau 4 (Forrest et al. 2004; D’Alessio et al. 2005b).”
Gas Flow across Gaps in Protoplanetary Disks (2005, background): “In the case of TW Hya, on the basis of low near-IR excess, there is evidence of dust depletion inside 4 AU, although the depletion is not complete (Calvet et al. 2002).”
Interpreting Spectral Energy Distributions from Young Stellar Objects. I. A Grid of 200,000 YSO Model SEDs (2006, methodology): “This was done in order to account for binary stars clearing cavities in envelopes in young sources (e.g. Jørgensen et al. 2005), and binary stars or planets clearing out the inner disk in disk models (Lin & Papaloizou 1979a,b; Artymowicz & Lubow 1994; Calvet et al. 2002; Rice et al. 2003).”
The Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP). I. Motivation, Sample, Calibration, and Overview (2018, background): “The initial foray into such work came from the “transition” disks (Strom et al. 1989; Skrutskie et al. 1990; Calvet et al. 2002), which show dense particle rings at r ≈ tens of au, outside depleted central cavities (e.g., Andrews et al. 2011; van der Marel et al. 2018; Pinilla et al. 2018).”
Heating Protoplanetary Disk Atmospheres (2004, background): “Thus, the TW Hya system poses interesting future challenges for our model and suggests the need for a more self-consistent density structure and potentially new heating and ionization sources.”
Correlated accretion ages and ε54Cr of meteorite parent bodies and the evolution of the solar nebula (2014, background): “Astronomical observations of star-forming regions suggest that some protoplanetary nebulae (called transitional disks) clear from inside, suggesting earlier formation of planetesimals close to the central star (Calvet et al. 2002).”
The Truncated Disk of CoKu Tau/4 (2004, methodology): “The mid-infrared spectrum of CoKu Tau/4 is reminiscent of that of the much older star TW Hya, where it has been suggested that the significant clearing of its inner disk is due to planet formation.”
The Far-Ultraviolet Spectra of TW Hydrae. II. Models of H2 Fluorescence in a Disk (2004, background): “In their models of the IR SED, Calvet et al. (2002) found an underabundance micron-sized dust grains within 4 AU of TW Hya.”