The Spitzer c2d Survey of Weak-Line T Tauri Stars. II. New Constraints on the Timescale for Planet Building

By L. Cieza, D. Padgett, K. Stapelfeldt, Jean Augereau, P. Harvey, N. Evans II, B. Mer'in, D. Koerner, A. Sargent, E. V. van Dishoeck and 10 more. 2007

181 citations recorded by the source corpus.

One of the central goals of the Spitzer Legacy Project ``From Cores to Disks'' (c2d) is to determine the frequency of circumstellar disks around weak-line T Tauri stars (WTTSs) and to study the properties and evolutionary status of these disks. Here we present a census of disks for a sample of over 230 WTTSs located in the c2d IRAC and MIPS maps of the Ophiuchus, Lupus, and Perseus Molecular Clouds. We find that ~20% of the WTTSs in a magnitude-limited subsample have IR excesses at IRAC wavelengths. These disks frequencies are ~3-6 times larger than that recently found for a sample of relatively isolated WTTSs located outside the highest extinction regions covered by the c2d maps. The disk fractions we find are more consistent with those obtained in recent Spitzer studies of WTTSs in young clusters such as IC 348 and Tr 37. According to their location in the H-R diagram, the WTTSs with excesses in our sample are among the younger part of the age distribution. Still, up to ~50% of the apparently youngest stars in the sample show no evidence of IR excess, suggesting that the circumstellar disks of a sizable fraction of pre-main-sequence stars dissipate in a timescale of ~1 Myr. We also find that none of the stars in our sample apparently older than ~10 Myr have detectable circumstellar disks at wavelengths <24 μm. The WTTS disks in our sample exhibit a wide range of properties (SED morphology, inner radius, Ldisk/L*, etc.) that bridge the gaps observed between the CTTSs and the debris disk regimes.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Spectroscopy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/afb2f8d28d6820b19f9b4739d085723b5ecfc646

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. S. Andrews
2. K. Luhman
3. D. Wilner
4. N. Evans II
5. Jonathan P. Williams
6. C. Dullemond
7. P. Myers
8. Eric Mamajek

In Spectroscopy

1. K. Luhman
2. N. Evans II
3. S. Andrews
4. D. Wilner
5. C. Dullemond
6. Jonathan P. Williams
7. P. Myers
8. A. Hughes

Citations in the corpus

• Protoplanetary disk lifetimes vs stellar mass and possible implications for giant planet populations (2015, result): “%) is consistent with transitional disk fractions reported in the literature (e.g. Skrutskie et al. 1990; Kenyon & Hartmann 1995; Andrews & Williams 2005; Cieza et al. 2007; Merín et al. 2010).”
• The Complete Census of 70 μm-Bright Debris Disks within “The Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems” Spitzer Legacy Survey of Sun-like Stars (2007, background): “There are additional long-wavelength Spitzer results within the younger age range of FEPS stars (e.g., Low et al. 2005; Smith et al. 2006; Padgett et al. 2006; Cieza et al. 2007).”
• PROPERTIES OF THE YOUNGEST PROTOSTARS IN PERSEUS, SERPENS, AND OPHIUCHUS (2008, methodology): “As we ultimately calibrate lifetimes based on the lifetime of Class II disks (∼ 2×106 yr; Kenyon et al. 1990; Cieza et al. 2007; Spezzi et al. 2008), star formation must have been steady in time for at least the last 2 Myr.”
• The Mass Distribution and Lifetime of Prestellar Cores in Perseus, Serpens, and Ophiuchus (2008, methodology): “As we ultimately calibrate our lifetimes based on the Class II phase (2 × 106 yr; Kenyon et al. 1990; Cieza et al. 2007; Spezzi et al. 2008), star formation must have been steady in time for at least the last 2 Myr.”
• RESOLVED IMAGES OF LARGE CAVITIES IN PROTOPLANETARY TRANSITION DISKS (2011, background): “Instead, the transition disks (in our adopted meaning) are typically identified with a set of specialized infrared color criteria (Cieza et al. 2007, 2010; Fang et al. 2009; Muzerolle et al. 2010; Meŕın et al. 2010).”
• FORMATION AND EVOLUTION OF PLANETARY SYSTEMS: PROPERTIES OF DEBRIS DUST AROUND SOLAR-TYPE STARS (2008, background): “By contrast, while some primordial disks dissipate within 1 Myr (Padgett et al. 2006; Cieza et al. 2007), about half of solar mass stars at age of 1-3 Myr remain surrounded by primordial disks whether traced by emission at 3-8µm (Haisch, Lada, & Lada 2001; Hernández et al. 2007), 10µm (Mamajek et…”
• Protoplanetary Disks and Their Evolution (2011, methodology): “Results from the c2d project (Cieza et al. 2007, Padgett et al. 2006, Wahhaj et al. 2010) show that ∼ 80% of young WTTS present 24µm fluxes consistent with bare stellar photospheres.”
• THE SPITZER c2d LEGACY RESULTS: STAR-FORMATION RATES AND EFFICIENCIES; EVOLUTION AND LIFETIMES (2008, methodology): “As shown by Cieza et al. (2007) and Meŕın et al. (2008b), classical T Tauri stars have excesses that start short (λturn−off ≤ 2 µm) and a tight distribution of αexcess, around −1.”
• Star and Protoplanetary Disk Properties in Orion's Suburbs (2009, background): “We collected PMS stars from the literature and distributed in different star-formation regions, i.e. Ophiuchus, Lupus (Cieza et al. 2007), Taurus (Luhman et al. 2006,Gudel et al. 2007),Tr37, NGC7160 (Sicilia-Aguilar et al. 2005, 2006a), L1630N, L1641 (this paper), NGC2264 (Dahm & Simon 2005; Cieza…”
• THE DISK POPULATION OF THE UPPER SCORPIUS ASSOCIATION (2012, background): “Most of our identifications of excesses in [24] and W4 agree with those from previous studies (Carpenter et al. 2006; Chen et al. 2006, 2011; Cieza et al. 2007; Riaz et al. 2009; Bowler et.”
• BANYAN. XI. The BANYAN Σ Multivariate Bayesian Algorithm to Identify Members of Young Associations with 150 pc (2018, unknown): “…Hartmann et al. 1986; (70) Slesnick et al. 2006b; (71) Wichmann et al. 1997; (72) Houk 1982; (73) Erickson et al. 2011; (74) Houk & Smith-Moore 1988; (75) Cieza et al. 2007; (76) Prato 2007; (77) Guenther et al. 2007; (78) Lawrence et al. 2007; (79) Bouy & Mart́ın 2009; (80) Donaldson et al.…”
• Global simulations of protoplanetary disks with net magnetic flux: I. Non-ideal MHD case (2016, background): “The diversity of processes occurring in protoplanetary disks is ultimately constrained by the disk lifetime (Haisch et al. 2001; Cieza et al. 2007).”
• Clustered and Triggered Star Formation in W5: Observations with Spitzer (2008, background): “Stellar sources not classified as either Class I or Class II by their IRAC or near-IR colors may still have red colors ([5.8] − [24] >1.5) and thus be candidate “cold disk” or “transition disk” objects—in other words: Class II objects with significant clearing of their inner disk region (see for exa”