Gaps and Rings in an ALMA Survey of Disks in the Taurus Star-forming Region

By F. Long 龙, P. Pinilla, G. Herczeg 沈, D. Harsono, Giovanni Dipierro, Ilaria Pascucci, Nathanial P. Hendler, M. Tazzari, E. Ragusa, C. Salyk and 16 more. Astrophysical Journal, 2018

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Rings are the most frequently revealed substructure in Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) dust observations of protoplanetary disks, but their origin is still hotly debated. In this paper, we identify dust substructures in 12 disks and measure their properties to investigate how they form. This subsample of disks is selected from a high-resolution (∼0.″12) ALMA 1.33 mm survey of 32 disks in the Taurus star-forming region, which was designed to cover a wide range of brightness and to be unbiased to previously known substructures. While axisymmetric rings and gaps are common within our sample, spiral patterns and high-contrast azimuthal asymmetries are not detected. Fits of disk models to the visibilities lead to estimates of the location and shape of gaps and rings, the flux in each disk component, and the size of the disk. The dust substructures occur across a wide range of stellar mass and disk brightness. Disks with multiple rings tend to be more massive and more extended. The correlation between gap locations and widths, the intensity contrast between rings and gaps, and the separations of rings and gaps could all be explained if most gaps are opened by low-mass planets (super-Earths and Neptunes) in the condition of low disk turbulence (α = 10−4). The gap locations are not well correlated with the expected locations of CO and N2 ice lines, so condensation fronts are unlikely to be a universal mechanism to create gaps and rings, though they may play a role in some cases.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b29acff2ad2862c0e74a2dbc4271d1b161ef71b9

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Citations in the corpus

The Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP). II. Characteristics of Annular Substructures (2018, methodology): “Otherwise, we refer the reader to van der Marel et al. (2018) for a compilation of all transition disks imaged at millimeter/sub-millimeter wavelengths up to the end of 2017 and to Long et al. (2018a) and Cieza et al. (2019) for more recent transition disk discoveries.”
Hints for a Turnover at the Snow Line in the Giant Planet Occurrence Rate (2018, background): “However, this number goes down to ∼38% in the Taurus disk survey from Long et al. (2018) which covers fainter millimeter disks, hence it is more representative of the entire disk population.”
Molecules with ALMA at Planet-forming Scales (MAPS). I. Program Overview and Highlights (2021, methodology): “This is consistent with previous results of Huang et al. (2018a) and Long et al. (2018) comparing dust substructure and inferred snowline locations towards larger samples of disks, as well as a recent in-depth chemical exploration of the transition disk around AB Aur (Rivière-Marichalar et al.…”
The Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP). VI. Dust Trapping in Thin-ringed Protoplanetary Disks (2018, background): “…multi-ringed disk observation of HL Tau (ALMA Partnership et al. 2015) a number of such multi-ringed disks have been detected (Andrews et al. 2016; Isella et al. 2016; Cieza et al. 2017; Fedele et al. 2017, 2018; Dipierro et al. 2018; van Terwisga et al. 2018; Clarke et al. 2018; Long et al. 2018).”
The Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP). I. Motivation, Sample, Calibration, and Overview (2018, background): “…et al. 2015; Béthune et al. 2017; Dullemond & Penzlin 2018; Suriano et al. 2018) or by strong gradients in material properties (e.g., Okuzumi et al. 2012; Estrada et al. 2016; Armitage et al. 2016; Stammler et al. 2017; Pinilla et al. 2017; but see van Terwisga et al. 2018; Long et al. 2018).”