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Register a new userResolving the Sub-AU-Scale Gas and Dust Distribution in FU Orionis Sources
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We present Keck Interferometer observations of the three prototypical FU Orionis stars, FU Ori, V1057 Cyg, and V1515 Cyg. With a spatial resolution of a few milli-arcseconds and a spectral resolution of 2000, our near-infrared observations spatially resolve gas and dust emission extending from stellocentric radii of ~0.05 AU to several AU. We fit these data with accretion disk models where each stellocentric radius of the disk is represented by a supergiant-type stellar emission spectrum at the disk temperature. A disk model is consistent with the data for FU Ori, although we require some local asymmetry in the disk. For V1057 Cyg the disk model does not fit our data well, especially compared to the fit quality achieved for FU Ori. We speculate that a disk wind may be contributing substantially to the observed near-IR emission in this source. The data for V1515 Cyg are noisier than the data obtained for the other two objects, and do not strongly constrain the validity of an accretion disk model.
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We report new near-infrared, long-baseline interferometric observations at the AU scale of the pre-main-sequence star FU Orionis with the PTI, IOTA and VLTI interferometers. This young stellar object has been observed on 42 nights over a period of 6 years from 1998 to 2003. We have obtained 287 independent measurements of the fringe visibility with 6 different baselines ranging from 20 to 110 meters in length, in the H and K bands. Our extensive (u,v)-plane coverage, coupled with the published spectral energy distribution data, allows us to test the accretion disk scenario. We find that the most probable explanation for these observations is that FU Ori hosts an active accretion disk whose temperature law is consistent with standard models. We are able to constrain the geometry of the disk, including an inclination of 55 deg and a position angle of 47 deg. In addition, a 10 percent peak-to-peak oscillation is detected in the data (at the two-sigma level) from the longest baselines, which we interpret as a possible disk hot-spot or companion. However, the oscillation in our best data set is best explained with an unresolved spot located at a projected distance of 10 AU at the 130 deg position angle and with a magnitude difference of DeltaK = 3.9 and DeltaH = 3.6 mag moving away from the center at a rate of 1.2 AU/yr. we propose to interpret this spot as the signature of a companion of the central FU Ori system on an extremely eccentric orbit. We speculate that the close encounter of this putative companion and the central star could be the explanation of the initial photometric rise of the luminosity of this object.
Pre-transitional disks are protoplanetary disks with a gapped disk structure, potentially indicating the presence of young planets in these systems. In order to explore the structure of these objects and their gap-opening mechanism, we observed the pre-transitional disk V1247 Orionis using the Very Large Telescope Interferometer, the Keck Interferometer, Keck-II, Gemini South, and IRTF. This allows us spatially resolve the AU-scale disk structure from near- to mid-infrared wavelengths (1.5 to 13 {mu}m), tracing material at different temperatures and over a wide range of stellocentric radii. Our observations reveal a narrow, optically-thick inner-disk component (located at 0.18 AU from the star) that is separated from the optically thick outer disk (radii >46 AU), providing unambiguous evidence for the existence of a gap in this pre-transitional disk. Surprisingly, we find that the gap region is filled with significant amounts of optically thin material with a carbon-dominated dust mineralogy. The presence of this optically thin gap material cannot be deduced solely from the spectral energy distribution, yet it is the dominant contributor at mid-infrared wavelengths. Furthermore, using Keck/NIRC2 aperture masking observations in the H, K, and L band, we detect asymmetries in the brightness distribution on scales of about 15-40 AU, i.e. within the gap region. The detected asymmetries are highly significant, yet their amplitude and direction changes with wavelength, which is not consistent with a companion interpretation but indicates an inhomogeneous distribution of the gap material. We interpret this as strong evidence for the presence of complex density structures, possibly reflecting the dynamical interaction of the disk material with sub-stellar mass bodies that are responsible for the gap clearing.
We present the first infrared interferometric observations of a young stellar object with a spatial projected resolution better than 2 AU. The observations were obtained with the Palomar Testbed Interferometer. FU Ori exhibits a visibility of V^2 =0.72 +/- 0.07 for a 103 +/- 5 m projected baseline at lambda = 2.2 microns. The data are consistent on the spatial scale probed by PTI both with a binary system scenario (maximum magnitude difference of 2.7 +/- 0.5 mag and smallest separation of 0.35 +/- 0.05 AU) and a standard luminous accretion disk model (approx. accretion rate of 6e-5 Mo/yr) where the thermal emission dominates the stellar scattering, and inconsistent with a single stellar photosphere.
FUors are young stellar objects experiencing large optical outbursts due to highly enhanced accretion from the circumstellar disk onto the star. FUors are often surrounded by massive envelopes, which play a significant role in the outburst mechanism. Conversely, the subsequent eruptions might gradually clear up the obscuring envelope material and drive the protostar on its way to become a disk-only T Tauri star. Here we present an APEX $^{12}$CO and $^{13}$CO survey of eight southern and equatorial FUors. We measure the mass of the gaseous material surrounding our targets. We locate the source of the CO emission and derive physical parameters for the envelopes and outflows, where detected. Our results support the evolutionary scenario where FUors represent a transition phase from envelope-surrounded protostars to classical T Tauri stars.
We use the high-resolution TNG50 cosmological magnetohydrodynamical simulation to explore the properties and origin of cold circumgalactic medium (CGM) gas around massive galaxies (M* > 10^11 Msun) at intermediate redshift (z~0.5). We discover a significant abundance of small-scale, cold gas structure in the CGM of red and dead elliptical systems, as traced by neutral HI and MgII. Halos can host tens of thousands of discrete absorbing cloudlets, with sizes of order a kpc or smaller. With a Lagrangian tracer analysis, we show that cold clouds form due to strong drho/rho >> 1 gas density perturbations which stimulate thermal instability. These local overdensities trigger rapid cooling from the hot virialized background medium at ~10^7 K to radiatively inefficient ~10^4 K clouds, which act as cosmologically long-lived, stimulated cooling seeds in a regime where the global halo does not satisfy the classic tcool/tff < 10 criterion. Furthermore, these small clouds are dominated by magnetic rather than thermal pressure, with plasma beta << 1, suggesting that magnetic fields may play an important role. The number and total mass of cold clouds both increase with resolution, and the ~8x10^4 Msun cell mass of TNG50 enables the ~few hundred pc, small-scale CGM structure we observe to form. Finally, we make a preliminary comparison against observations from the COS-LRG, LRG-RDR, COS-Halos, and SDSS LRG surveys. We broadly find that our recent, high-resolution cosmological simulations produce sufficiently high covering fractions of extended, cold gas as observed to surround massive galaxies.
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