Circumstellar Dust Disks in Taurus-Auriga: The Submillimeter Perspective

By S. Andrews, Jonathan P. Williams. 2005

691 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a sensitive, multiwavelength submillimeter continuum survey of 153 young stellar objects in the Taurus-Auriga star formation region. The submillimeter detection rate is 61% to a completeness limit of ~10 mJy (3 σ) at 850 μm. The inferred circumstellar disk masses are lognormally distributed with a mean mass of ~5 × 10-3 M☉ and a large dispersion (0.5 dex). Roughly one-third of the submillimeter sources have disk masses larger than the minimal nebula from which the solar system formed. The median disk-to-star mass ratio is 0.5%. The empirical behavior of the submillimeter continuum is best described as Fν ∝ ν2.0±0.5 between 350 μm and 1.3 mm, which we argue is due to the combined effects of the fraction of optically thick emission and a flatter frequency behavior of the opacity compared to the interstellar medium. The latter effect could be due to a substantial population of large dust grains, which presumably would have grown through collisional agglomeration. In this sample, the only stellar property that is correlated with the outer disk is the presence of a companion. We find evidence for significant decreases in submillimeter flux densities, disk masses, and submillimeter continuum slopes along the canonical infrared spectral energy distribution evolution sequence for young stellar objects. The fraction of objects detected in the submillimeter is essentially identical to the fraction with excess near-infrared emission, suggesting that dust in the inner and outer disks is removed nearly simultaneously.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Spectroscopy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fe1e4610be75e76a9a97057f2603e33dffab2584

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Citations in the corpus

THE DISK POPULATION OF THE TAURUS STAR-FORMING REGION (2009, background): “Andrews & Williams (2005) suggested that FW Tau could be a transitional disk based on a detection at submillimeter wavelengths.”
Steady State Evolution of Debris Disks around A Stars (2007, methodology): “The distribution of initial disk masses, Mtot(0), was based on the results of Andrews & Williams (2005) who did a sub-mm study of protoplanetary disks in the Taurus-Auriga star forming region, i.e., for ∼ 1M stars, from which they derived that this population has a log-normal distribution of dust…”
One Solution to the Mass Budget Problem for Planet Formation: Optically Thick Disks with Dust Scattering (2019, background): “Previous submm/mm surveys (Beckwith et al. 1990; Andrews & Williams 2005; Andrews et al. 2013), together with recent ALMA surveys (Ansdell et al. 2016; Cieza et al. 2019), have suggested that the mass of small dust (.cm, which ALMA is sensitive to) in Class II protostellar disks is quite low.”
UNVEILING THE STRUCTURE OF PRE-TRANSITIONAL DISKS (2010, background): “…SpeX (red solid line; this work), Spitzer IRAC (blue solid triangles; Luhman et al. 2010), Spitzer IRS (blue solid line; Furlan et al. 2006), IRAS (open triangles; Weaver & Jones 1992), and millimeter (filled pentagon from Andrews & Williams 2005; open pentagons from Espaillat et al. 2007) data.”
Debris disks as signposts of terrestrial planet formation (2011, background): “These observations suggest that the typical protoplanetary disk has a mass of 0.001−0.1 Solar masses (Andrews & Williams 2005, 2007a; Eisner et al. 2008) and a radial surface density profile of roughly r−(0.5−1) (Mundy et al. 2000; Andrews & Williams 2007b; Isella et al. 2010).”
Variations on Debris Disks: Icy Planet Formation at 30-150 AU for 1-3 M☉ Main-Sequence Stars (2008, background): “…of dusty disks in the nearby Ophiuchus and Taurus-Auriga starforming regions indicate a 2Y3 ( 1) order of magnitude range in the masses (radii) of disks surrounding young stars with typical ages of 1Myr (e.g., Osterloh & Beckwith1995; Motte &André 2001; Andrews & Williams 2005, 2007a, 2007b).”
TWO WIDE PLANETARY-MASS COMPANIONS TO SOLAR-TYPE STARS IN UPPER SCORPIUS (2010, background): “Although most observed disks have masses of ∼5MJ , a few disks around solar-type stars (e.g. DL Tau) have large enough linear dimensions and mass (up to ∼1000AU and 0.1M⊙, Andrews & Williams 2005, 2007) to fragment into observed ULMCs.”
A SPATIALLY RESOLVED INNER HOLE IN THE DISK AROUND GM AURIGAE (2009, background): “While observations suggest that the inner and outer dust disk disperse nearly simultaneously (e.g. Skrutskie et al. 1990; Wolk & Walter 1996; Andrews & Williams 2005), it is not clear which physical mechanism(s) drives this process, or the details of how it progresses.”
PROSAC: a submillimeter array survey of low-mass protostars - II. The mass evolution of envelopes, disks, and stars from the class 0 through I stages (2009, background): “For more evolved YSOs in fairly isolated regions, single-dish continuum observations have been used for comparative studies of statistically significant samples of sources (e.g., Beckwith et al., 1990; André & Montmerle, 1994; Andrews & Williams, 2005, 2007b).”
Dust properties of protoplanetary disks in the Taurus-Auriga star forming region from millimeter wavelengths (2009, background): “The sensitivity limitation is even more severe at 3mm, therefore our final sample includes 58% of all the class II isolated sample of Andrews & Williams (2005) with an estimated mass greater than 0.4 M⊙, but only two sources with M⋆ < 0.4 M⊙ (out of 10 in Andrews & Williams 2005).”
A millimeter Continuum Size–Luminosity Relationship for Protoplanetary Disks (2017, methodology): “With reasonable assumptions for the grain properties, mm luminosity surveys have been used to construct disk mass distributions (Andrews & Williams 2005, 2007), and study how they vary with time (Mathews et al. 2012; Williams et al. 2013; Carpenter et al. 2014; Ansdell et al. 2015; Cieza et al.…”
PROSAC: A Submillimeter Array Survey of Low-Mass Protostars. I. Overview of Program: Envelopes, Disks, Outflows, and Hot Cores (2007, background): “These disks appear to be at least as massive as typical T Tauri disks (Andrews & Williams 2005) (or perhaps more directly, they have comparable fluxes), arguing against a significant buildup of the disks from the Class 0 stage to the later T Tauri stages.”
The Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution Project (DSHARP). I. Motivation, Sample, Calibration, and Overview (2018, neutral): “5 (cf., Andrews & Williams 2005).”
Theory of Star Formation (2007, background): “Andrews & Williams (2005) found, for a large sample of YSOs in Taurus-Auriga, that in general those systems with near-IR signatures of inner disks also have sub-mm signatures of outer disks, and vice versa; they conclude that inner and outer disk lifetimes agree within 105 yr.”