Resolved Inner Disks around Herbig Ae/Be Stars

By Joshua A. Eisner, Benjamin F. Lane, L. Hillenbrand, R. Akeson, A. Sargent. 2004

181 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have observed 14 Herbig Ae/Be (HAEBE) sources with the long-baseline near-IR Palomar Testbed Interferometer. All except two sources are resolved at 2.2 μm, with angular sizes generally ≲5 mas. We determine the size scales and orientations of the 2.2 μm emission using various models: uniform disks, Gaussians, uniform rings, flat accretion disks with inner holes, and flared disks with puffed-up inner rims. Although it is difficult to distinguish different radial distributions, we are able to place firm constraints on the inclinations of most sources; seven objects display significantly inclined morphologies. The inner disk inclinations derived from our near-IR data are generally compatible with the outer disk geometries inferred from millimeter interferometric observations, implying that HAEBE disks are not significantly warped. Using the derived inner disk sizes and inclinations, we compute the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) for two simple physical disk models and compare these with observed SEDs compiled from the literature and new near-IR photometry. While geometrically flat accretion disk models are consistent with the data for the earliest spectral types in our sample (MWC 297, V1685 Cyg, and MWC 1080), the later type sources are explained better through models incorporating puffed-up inner disk walls. The different inner disk geometries may indicate different accretion mechanisms for early- and late-type HAEBE stars.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Spectroscopy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/88850f699471c6a779c2ee10da914d4edacfc6c8

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. C. Dullemond
2. A. Natta
3. J. Monnier
4. N. Calvet
5. L. Hartmann
6. Andrea Isella
7. K. Luhman
8. S. Andrews

In Spectroscopy

1. C. Dullemond
2. A. Natta
3. N. Calvet
4. Andrea Isella
5. L. Hartmann
6. J. Monnier
7. K. Luhman
8. L. Hillenbrand

Citations in the corpus

• Few Skewed Disks Found in First Closure-Phase Survey of Herbig Ae/Be Stars (2006, methodology): “Interestingly, the NIR ring diameter found here is undersized compared to the normal sizeluminosity relation for Herbig Ae/late Be stars, as also found for some other early Be Herbigs (Monnier & Millan-Gabet 2002; Eisner et al. 2004).”
• The Inner Regions of Protoplanetary Disks (2010, methodology): “Based on the disk geometry seen by aperture masking for Herbig Be stars, and later confirmed for Herbig Ae disks using “long baseline” infrared interferometry (Eisner et al., 2003, 2004), we are led to consider disk models to explain the interferometry size data.”
• The Near-Infrared Size-Luminosity Relations for Herbig Ae/Be Disks (2005, background): “…again and again, with ‘‘large’’ disk sizes for Herbig Ae/Be stars being found by Keck aperture masking (Tuthill et al. 2001; Danchi et al. 2001), additional IOTAwork (MillanGabet et al. 2001), and Palomar Testbed Interferometer observations (Akeson et al. 2000, 2002; Eisner et al. 2003, 2004).”
• The shape of the inner rim in proto-planetary disks (2005, methodology): “Values of Rin have been derived for a number of objects from near-IR interferometric observations ( see, for example, Akeson et al. 2000, 2002, Millan-Gabet et al. 2001, Monnier and Millan-Gabet 2002, Colavita et al. 2003, Eisner et al. 2003, 2004, 2005).”