EVIDENCE FOR DUST CLEARING THROUGH RESOLVED SUBMILLIMETER IMAGING

By J. Brown, G. Blake, C. Qi, C. Dullemond, D. Wilner, J. Williams. 2008

213 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Mid-infrared spectrophotometric observations have revealed a small subclass of circumstellar disks with spectral energy distributions (SEDs) suggestive of large inner gaps with low dust content. However, such data provide only an indirect and model-dependent method of finding central holes. Imaging of protoplanetry disks provides an independent check of SED modeling. We present here the direct characterization of three 33–47 AU radii inner gaps, in the disks around LkHα 330, SR 21N, and HD 135344B, via 340 GHz (880 μm) dust continuum aperture synthesis observations obtained with the Submillimeter Array (SMA). The large gaps are fully resolved at ∼0.″3 by the SMA data and mostly empty of dust, with less than (1–7.5) × 10−6 M☉ of fine grained solids inside the holes. Gas (as traced by atomic accretion markers and CO 4.7 μm rovibrational emission) is still present in the inner regions of all three disks. For each, the inner hole exhibits a relatively steep rise in dust emission to the outer disk, a feature more likely to originate from the gravitational influence of a companion body than from a process expected to show a more shallow gradient like grain growth. Importantly, the good agreement between the spatially resolved data and spectrophotometry-based models lends confidence to current interpretations of SEDs, wherein the significant dust emission deficits arise from disks with inner gaps or holes. Further SED-based searches can therefore be expected to yield numerous additional candidates that can be examined at high spatial resolution.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f72cb0c3bb63075138e4bcebe50abf76fb70a6bf

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. S. Andrews
2. K. Luhman
3. D. Wilner
4. T. Birnstiel
5. L. Hartmann
6. Anders Johansen
7. L. Hillenbrand
8. G. Herczeg

In Instrumentation

1. S. Andrews
2. K. Luhman
3. T. Birnstiel
4. D. Wilner
5. A. Kraus
6. Simon Bruderer
7. L. Hillenbrand
8. Eric Mamajek

Citations in the corpus

• A Spitzer View of Protoplanetary Disks in the γ Velorum Cluster (2008, background): “In addition, we show in Figure 4 the location of the newly discovered class of pre-transitional disks, in which gaps in primordial disks rather than holes have been identified (Espaillat et al. 2007b; Brown et al. 2008).”
• DUST FILTRATION BY PLANET-INDUCED GAP EDGES: IMPLICATIONS FOR TRANSITIONAL DISKS (2012, result): “…1992; Calvet et al. 2002, 2005; Rice et al. 2003; Schneider et al. 2003; Espaillat et al. 2007, 2008, 2010; Hughes et al. 2009), an interpretation confirmed in some cases via direct sub-mm imaging (e.g., Pietu et al. 2006; Brown et al. 2007, 2009; Hughes et al. 2009; Andrews et al. 2009, 2011).”
• A SPATIALLY RESOLVED INNER HOLE IN THE DISK AROUND GM AURIGAE (2009, background): “Sev- eral recent millimeter studies have resolved inner emission cavities for disks with infrared SED deficits through direct imaging observations, e.g. TW Hya (Calvet et al. 2002; Hughes et al. 2007), LkHα 330 (Brown et al. 2007, 2008), and LkCa 15 (Piétu et al. 2007; Espaillat et al. 2008).”
• PROTOPLANETARY DISK STRUCTURES IN OPHIUCHUS (2009, background): “A few such observations have even discovered large central cavities in the dust emission − potential signatures of young planetary systems (Piétu et al. 2006; Brown et al. 2008, 2009; Hughes et al. 2007, 2009).”
• On the theory of disc photoevaporation (2011, background): “…in which photoevaporating transition discs are expected, over-plotted with observations8 of discs classified as transition discs: cyan triangles (Brown et al. 2009); blue filled triangles and squares (Cieza et al. 2010); black open squares (Ercolano et al. 2009a); black filled squares…”
• Ring shaped dust accumulation in transition disks (2012, background): “Reproducing asymmetric features in the disk, such as the ones found in HD135344B (Brown et al. 2009) is subject of future work, as they will be well detectable with ALMA.”
• THE ROLE OF MULTIPLICITY IN DISK EVOLUTION AND PLANET FORMATION (2011, background): “…submillimeter and millimeter observations have revealed the mass and size distributions of disks (Andrews & Williams 2005; Mann & Williams 2010), including the first direct detections of gaps that might be attributed to planet formation (Andrews et al. 2008; Hughes et al. 2009; Brown et al. 2009).”
• The Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP). V. Interpreting ALMA Maps of Protoplanetary Disks in Terms of a Dust Model (2018, background): “S sive rings (e.g. Brown et al. 2009; Casassus et al. 2013) but also often non-axisymmetric features such as lopsided rings (e.g. van der Marel et al. 2013), and spirals (e.g. Pérez et al. 2016).”
• TRANSITIONAL DISKS AS SIGNPOSTS OF YOUNG, MULTIPLANET SYSTEMS (2011, methodology): “Brown et al. (2009) noted significant azimuthal asymmetries in the outer disk dust distribution for LkHα 330 and HD 135344 B, while Pontoppidan et al. (2008) noted asymmetries in the disks of HD 135344 B and SR 21 on the scale of a few AU or less2.”
• A LIKELY CLOSE-IN LOW-MASS STELLAR COMPANION TO THE TRANSITIONAL DISK STAR HD 142527 (2012, background): “A number of transition disks possess gaps either posited from SED studies or directly imaged (Andrews et al. 2011; Fukagawa et al. 2006; Pott et al. 2010; Brown et al. 2009) which may be due to clearing of dust by a forming planet or brown dwarf and thus may produce the observed mid-IR deficit.”
• Resolved gas cavities in transitional disks inferred from CO isotopologs with ALMA (2015, background): “Dust cavities have been inferred from modeling of spectral energy distributions (SEDs; Espaillat et al. 2014, and references therein) and millimeter interferometry (e.g., Brown et al. 2009; Andrews et al. 2011).”
• DISCOVERY OF SMALL-SCALE SPIRAL STRUCTURES IN THE DISK OF SAO 206462 (HD 135344B): IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PHYSICAL STATE OF THE DISK FROM SPIRAL DENSITY WAVE THEORY (2012, unknown): “′′25 resolution (Brown et al. 2009).”
• Gaps, Rings, and Non-Axisymmetric Structures in Protoplanetary Disks - From Simulations to ALMA Observations (2014, background): “Another characteristic feature of such disks is that their inner parts are depleted of dust (Brown et al. 2009), which is possibly caused by particle traps in the outer regions.”
• STRUCTURE AND EVOLUTION OF PRE-MAIN-SEQUENCE CIRCUMSTELLAR DISKS (2009, background): “…higher than 1′′ is still very small and essentially restricted to more massive and luminous pre-main sequence circumstellar disks such as LkHα 330 (Brown et al. 2008), HD 163296 (Isella et al. 2007), AB Aur, MWC 480, DM Tau and LkCa 15 (Piétu et al. 2005, 2006, 2007), CQ Tau (Testi et al.…”
• THE DISK POPULATION OF THE TAURUS STAR-FORMING REGION (2009, background): “…valuable for verifying the presence of disks for the stars with the smallest 24 µm excesses (Andrews & Williams 2005) and for resolving inner holes (Brown et al. 2008; Dutrey et al. 2008; Hughes et al. 2007, 2009) while mid-IR spectroscopy would provide the high-resolution SEDs that are necessary…”
• Dust Evolution and the Formation of Planetesimals (2016, methodology): “These SMA data also directly resolved gaps/holes in transition disks which were already inferred from SED modeling (e.g., Brown et al. 2009; Andrews et al. 2011).”
• RESOLVED IMAGES OF LARGE CAVITIES IN PROTOPLANETARY TRANSITION DISKS (2011, methodology): “Brown et al. (2007) also used RADMC calculations to reproduce the SED alone, and later combined with these SMA data (Brown et al. 2009), but with a different density model (a power-law Σ profile, truncated at the edges).”