Dust properties of protoplanetary disks in the Taurus-Auriga star forming region from millimeter wavelengths

By L. Ricci, L. Testi, A. Natta, R. Neri, S. Cabrit, G. Herczeg. 2009

289 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the most sensitive 3 mm-survey to date of protoplanetary disks carried out in the Taurus-Auriga star forming region (average rms of about 0.3 mJy), using the IRAM PdBI. With our high detection rate of 17/19 we provide the first detections at wavelengths longer than about 1 mm for 12 sources. This enables us to statistically study the mm SED slopes and dust properties of faint disks and compare them to brighter disks using a uniform analysis method. With these new data and literature measurements at sub-millimeter and millimeter wavelengths, we analyze the dust properties of a sample of 21 isolated disks around T Tauri stars in the Taurus-Auriga star forming region. Together with the information about the disks’ spatial extension from sub/mm-mm interferometric studies, we derive from the observed sub-mm/mm spectral energy distribution constraints on the dust opacity law at these wavelengths, using two-layer flared disk models and a self-consistent dust model that properly takes into account the variation of the dust opacity with grain growth. We find evidence for the presence of dust particles in the disk midplane that have grown to sizes as large as at least 1 millimeter in all the disks of our sample, confirming what was previously observed on smaller brighter objects. This indicates that the dust coagulation from ISM dust to mm-sized grains is a very fast process in protoplanetary disks, which appears to occur before a young stellar object enters the class II evolutionary stage. The amount of these large grains in the disk outer regions is also found to be stationary throughout the whole class II evolutionary stage, which indicates that mechanisms slowing down the dust inward migration play an important role in the Taurus-Auriga protoplanetary disks. Another result is that the spectral index between 1 and 3 mm for the six faintest disks in our sample is on average smaller than for the brighter disks, indicating either that these fainter yet unmapped disks are spatially much less extended than the brighter spatially resolved disks, or that fainter disks have typically larger dust grains in their outer regions. Considering that these fainter disks are more representative of the bulk of the disk population than the brighter ones, this may have important consequences for the theories of planetesimal formation and disk formation and evolution. Finally, we investigate the relations between the derived dust properties, namely dust mass and grain growth, and the properties of the central star, like its mass, age and mass accretion rate.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c842baf9185cd9d57544e8dcf2e77b3e8128898e

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Citations in the corpus

Dust size distributions in coagulation/fragmentation equilibrium: numerical solutions and analytical fits (2010, background): “Indeed, the observational evidence suggests that growth up to cm-sizes is possible (e.g., Testi et al. 2003; Natta et al. 2004; Rodmann et al. 2006; Ricci et al. 2010).”
The Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP). II. Characteristics of Annular Substructures (2018, background): “…indices and emis- sion sizes have explored whether disks only appear to be optically thin at low resolution because of beam dilution of optically thick substructures (e.g., Ricci et al. 2010; Tripathi et al. 2017), motivating an analysis of whether the DSHARP substructures are optically thick.”
THE MASS DEPENDENCE BETWEEN PROTOPLANETARY DISKS AND THEIR STELLAR HOSTS (2013, unknown): “…Cabrit et al. 2006; Bouy et al. 2008; Hughes et al. 2008, 2009; Schaefer et al. 2009; Isella et al. 2009, 2010, 2012; Hamidouche 2010; Öberg et al. 2010; Ricci et al. 2010, 2012, 2013; Andrews et al. 2011; Phan-Bao et al. 2011; Sandell et al. 2011; Cieza et al. 2012; Harris et al. 2012, 2013).”
DUST AND GAS IN THE DISK OF HL TAURI: SURFACE DENSITY, DUST SETTLING, AND DUST-TO-GAS RATIO (2015, background): “…studies are now suggesting that the larger grain abundances depend on radius, with a concentration toward the center of protoplanetary disks (Ricci et al. 2010; Guilloteau et al. 2011; Pérez et al. 2012; Menu et al. 2014); however, the spatial resolution was insufficient to resolve the…”
Multiwavelength analysis for interferometric (sub-)mm observations of protoplanetary disks - Radial constraints on the dust properties and the disk structure (2015, background): “(1) Andrews et al. (2009); (2) Ricci et al. (2010b); (3) Guilloteau et al. (2011), Kenyon & Hartmann (1995). is conservative in the sense that provides the maximum possible contamination at shorter wavelengths.”
Trapping dust particles in the outer regions of protoplanetary disks (2011, methodology): “For this case, the under-predicted fluxes are not consistent with observational data for disk ages & 1Myr, i.e. with the mean estimated ages of PMS stars in the Taurus, Ophiucus and Orion regions.”
Dust Evolution and the Formation of Planetesimals (2016, background): “The observations at several (sub-)millimeter wavelengths may give some constraints on the size distribution of dust grains (Ricci et al. 2010b).”
The Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP). VI. Dust Trapping in Thin-ringed Protoplanetary Disks (2018, background): “From an observational perspective, the radial drift problem manifests itself by the presence of large grains in the outer regions of protoplanetary disks (Testi et al. 2003; Andrews et al. 2009; Ricci et al. 2010), which appears to be in conflict with theoretical predictions (Brauer et al. 2007).”
MILLIMETER-WAVE POLARIZATION OF PROTOPLANETARY DISKS DUE TO DUST SCATTERING (2015, background): “…disks at millimeter wavelengths, β ≈ 0 − 1, where κdust ∝ λ−β (e.g., Beckwith & Sargent 1991; Wilner et al. 2000; Kitamura et al. 2002; Andrews & Williams 2005; Ricci et al. 2010b,a; Guilloteau et al. 2011), which suggests that dust grains are grown to millimeter in size (e.g., Miyake & Nakagawa…”
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.”
A millimeter Continuum Size–Luminosity Relationship for Protoplanetary Disks (2017, methodology): “For each time and combination of parameters from a coarse grid, we constructed a radial profile of 340 GHz optical depths as the summed (over particle size) product of the computed surface densities and representative opacities (the latter using the prescription of Ricci et al. 2010).”
A STEEPER THAN LINEAR DISK MASS–STELLAR MASS SCALING RELATION (2016, background): “A dependence of β with stellar mass is not seen for Taurus disks around ∼0.4–2.2Me stars and for a few disks around substellar objects (Ricci et al. 2010, 2014), but it should be tested if it arises over a statistically significant sample of disks spanning a broad range in stellar masses and at…”
Gravitational Instabilities in Circumstellar Disks (2016, background): “Moreover, the conversion of a flux to a <mm-size dust mass requires adopting an opacity, which is itself dependent on unknowns like the grain-size distribution, and grain properties such as chemical composition and porosity (see, e. g. Natta et al. 2004; Ricci et al. 2010).”
The effect of gas drag on the growth of protoplanets. Analytical expressions for the accretion of small bodies in laminar disks (2010, background): “Dust fragmentation (Birnstiel et al. 2009) or radial diffusion (Ciesla 2009) may be promising mechanisms to retain mm-size particles in the (outer) disk, where they are observed on ∼Myr timescales (e.g., Lommen et al. 2009; Ricci et al. 2010).”
Separating gas-giant and ice-giant planets by halting pebble accretion (2014, background): “This approach can also be justified observationally: measurements of the spectral index of the dust opacity in protoplanetary discs reveal that a significant fraction of solids grow to mm and cm sizes early on and remain present over the life-time of the disc (Ricci et al. 2010).”
A dual-frequency sub-arcsecond study of proto-planetary disks at mm wavelengths: first evidence for radial variations of the dust properties (2011, methodology): “Ricci et al. (2010) found a lower average value for the spectral index α for disks with low 1.3 mm flux than in disks that show strong emission.”
The Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP). VII. The Planet–Disk Interactions Interpretation (2018, methodology): “This shallower dust size distribution is expected from dust growth models (Birnstiel et al. 2012) and consistent with SED constraints (D’Alessio et al. 2001) and the spectral index at millimeter/centimeter wavelengths (Ricci et al. 2010a, 2010b; Pérez et al. 2015).”