Few Skewed Disks Found in First Closure-Phase Survey of Herbig Ae/Be Stars

By J. Monnier, J. Berger, R. Millan-Gabet, Wesley A. Traub, F. Schloerb, E. Pedretti, M. Benisty, N. Carleton, P. Haguenauer, P. Kern and 6 more. 2006

133 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using the three-telescope IOTA interferometer on Mount Hopkins, we report results from the first near-infrared (λ = 1.65 μm) closure-phase survey of young stellar objects (YSOs). These closure phases allow us to unambiguously detect departures from centrosymmetry (i.e., skew) in the emission pattern from YSO disks on the scale of ~4 mas, expected from generic "flared disk" models. Six of 14 targets showed small, yet statistically significant nonzero closure phases, with largest values from the young binary system MWC 361-A and the (pre-main-sequence?) Be star HD 45677. Our observations are quite sensitive to the vertical structure of the inner disk, and we confront the predictions of the "puffed-up inner wall" models of Dullemond, Dominik, & Natta (DDN). Our data support disk models with curved inner rims because the expected emission appears symmetrically distributed around the star over a wide range of inclination angles. In contrast, our results are incompatible with the models possessing vertical inner walls because they predict extreme skewness (i.e., large closure phases) from the near-IR disk emission that is not seen in our data. In addition, we also present the discovery of mysterious H-band "halos" (~5%-10% of light on scales 0.″01-0.″50) around a few objects, a preliminary "parametric imaging" study for HD 45677, and the first astrometric orbit for the young binary MWC 361-A.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ef11503032a07d4a9e7f10fca97b68b5da21cbf6

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. C. Dullemond
2. Th. Henning
3. J. Monnier
4. R. van Boekel
5. A. Sicilia-Aguilar
6. A. Carmona
7. M. Fang
8. Wei Wang

In Instrumentation

1. J. Monnier
2. Th. Henning
3. R. van Boekel
4. A. Sicilia-Aguilar
5. A. Carmona
6. M. Fang
7. Wei Wang
8. C. Dullemond

Citations in the corpus

• The Inner Regions of Protoplanetary Disks (2010, background): “Monnier et al. (2006) reported that only few disks show a strong non-zero closure phase, although half of their 16 sources did show small but significant non-zero closure phase.”
• Star and Protoplanetary Disk Properties in Orion's Suburbs (2009, background): “…objects confirm that interpretation (e.g. Eisner et al. 2003; Leinert et al. 2004; Monnieret al. 2005; Akeson et al. 2005a,b; Isella et al. 2006; Monnier et al. 2006; Eisner et al. 2007; Acke et al. 2008; Kraus et al. 2008), though there is continued discussion on the relative imporance of…”