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Register a new userFormation of Isothermal Disks around Protoplanets. I. Introductory Three-Dimensional Global Simulations for Sub-Neptune-Mass Protoplanets
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The regular satellites found around Neptune ($approx 17~M_{Earth}$) and Uranus ($approx 14.5~M_{Earth}$) suggest that past gaseous circumplanetary disks may have co-existed with solids around sub-Neptune-mass protoplanets ($< 17~M_{Earth}$). These disks have been shown to be cool, optically thin, quiescent, with low surface density and low viscosity. Numerical studies of the formation are difficult and technically challenging. As an introductory attempt, three-dimensional global simulations are performed to explore the formation of circumplanetary disks around sub-Neptune-mass protoplanets embedded within an isothermal protoplanetary disk at the inviscid limit of the fluid in the absence of self-gravity. Under such conditions, a sub-Neptune-mass protoplanet can reasonably have a rotationally supported circumplanetary disk. The size of the circumplanetary disk is found to be roughly one-tenth of the corresponding Hill radius, which is consistent with the orbital radii of irregular satellites found for Uranus. The protoplanetary gas accretes onto the circumplanetary disk vertically from high altitude and returns to the protoplanetary disk again near the midplane. This implies an open system in which the circumplanetary disk constantly exchanges angular momentum and material with its surrounding prenatal protoplanetary gas.
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The mechanisms of planet formation are still under debate. We know little about how planets form, even if more than 4000 exoplanets have been detected to date. Recent investigations target the cot of newly born planets: the protoplanetary disk. At the first stages of their life, exoplanets still accrete material from the gas-rich disk in which they are embedded. Transitional disks are indeed disks that show peculiarities, such as gaps, spiral arms, and rings, which can be connected to the presence of substellar companions. To investigate what is responsible for these features, we selected all the known transitional disks in the solar neighborhood (<200 pc) that are visible from the southern hemisphere. We conducted a survey of 11 transitional disks (TDs) with the SPHERE instrument at the VLT. This is the largest Halpha survey that has been conducted so far to look for protoplanets. The observations were performed with the Halpha filter of ZIMPOL in order to target protoplanets that are still in the accretion stage. All the selected targets are very young stars, less than 20 Myr, and show low extinction in the visible. We reduced the ZIMPOL pupil stabilized data by applying the method of the angular spectral differential imaging (ASDI), which combines both techniques. The datacubes are composed of the CntHalpha and the narrow band filter Halpha, which are taken simultaneously to permit the suppression of the speckle pattern. The principal component analysis (PCA) method was employed for the reduction of the data. For each dataset, we derived the 5sigma contrast limit and converted it in upper limits on the accretion luminosity. We do not detect any new accreting substellar companions around the targeted transition disks down to an average contrast of 12 magnitudes at 0.2 arcsec from the central star (continues in the manuscript).
We predict magnitudes for young planets embedded in transition discs, still affected by extinction due to material in the disc. We focus on Jupiter-size planets at a late stage of their formation, when the planet has carved a deep gap in the gas and dust distributions and the disc starts being transparent to the planet flux in the infrared (IR). Column densities are estimated by means of three-dimensional hydrodynamical models, performed for several planet masses. Expected magnitudes are obtained by using typical extinction properties of the disc material and evolutionary models of giant planets. For the simulated cases located at $5.2$ AU in a disc with local unperturbed surface density of $127$ $mathrm{g} cdot mathrm{cm}^{-2}$, a $1$ $M_J$ planet is highly extincted in J-, H- and K-bands, with predicted absolute magnitudes $ge 50$ mag. In L- and M-bands extinction decreases, with planet magnitudes between $25$ and $35$ mag. In the N-band, due to the silicate feature on the dust opacities, the expected magnitude increases to $40$ mag. For a $2$ $M_J$ planet, the magnitudes in J-, H- and K-bands are above $22$ mag, while for L-, M- and N-bands the planet magnitudes are between $15$ and $20$ mag. For the $5$ $M_J$ planet, extinction does not play a role in any IR band, due to its ability to open deep gaps. Contrast curves are derived for the transition discs in CQ Tau, PDS70, HL Tau, TW Hya and HD163296. Planet mass upper-limits are estimated for the known gaps in the last two systems.
We present $L$-band imaging of the PDS 70 planetary system with Keck/NIRC2 using the new infrared pyramid wavefront sensor. We detected both PDS 70 b and c in our images, as well as the front rim of the circumstellar disk. After subtracting off a model of the disk, we measured the astrometry and photometry of both planets. Placing priors based on the dynamics of the system, we estimated PDS 70 b to have a semi-major axis of $20^{+3}_{-4}$~au and PDS 70 c to have a semi-major axis of $34^{+12}_{-6}$~au (95% credible interval). We fit the spectral energy distribution (SED) of both planets. For PDS 70 b, we were able to place better constraints on the red half of its SED than previous studies and inferred the radius of the photosphere to be 2-3~$R_{Jup}$. The SED of PDS 70 c is less well constrained, with a range of total luminosities spanning an order of magnitude. With our inferred radii and luminosities, we used evolutionary models of accreting protoplanets to derive a mass of PDS 70 b between 2 and 4 $M_{textrm{Jup}}$ and a mean mass accretion rate between $3 times 10^{-7}$ and $8 times 10^{-7}~M_{textrm{Jup}}/textrm{yr}$. For PDS 70 c, we computed a mass between 1 and 3 $M_{textrm{Jup}}$ and mean mass accretion rate between $1 times 10^{-7}$ and $5 times~10^{-7} M_{textrm{Jup}}/textrm{yr}$. The mass accretion rates imply dust accretion timescales short enough to hide strong molecular absorption features in both planets SEDs.
Using linear perturbation theory, we investigate the torque exerted on a low-mass planet embedded in a gaseous protoplanetary disc with finite thermal diffusivity. When the planet does not release energy into the ambient disc, the main effect of thermal diffusion is the softening of the enthalpy peak near the planet, which results in the appearance of two cold and dense lobes on either side of the orbit, of size smaller than the thickness of the disc. The lobes exert torques of opposite sign on the planet, each comparable in magnitude to the one-sided Lindblad torque. When the planet is offset from corotation, the lobes are asymmetric and the planet experiences a net torque, the `cold thermal torque, which has a magnitude that depends on the relative value of the distance to corotation to the size of the lobes $simsqrt{chi/Omega_p}$, $chi$ being the thermal diffusivity and $Omega_p$ the orbital frequency. We believe that this effect corresponds to the phenomenon named `cold finger recently reported in numerical simulations, and we argue that it constitutes the dominant mode of migration of sub-Earth-mass objects. When the planet is luminous, the heat released into the ambient disc results in an additional disturbance that takes the form of hot, low-density lobes. They give a torque, named heating torque in previous work, that has an expression similar, but of opposite sign, to the cold thermal torque.
Transition disks, protoplanetary disks with inner clearings, are promising objects in which to directly image forming planets. The high contrast imaging technique of non-redundant masking is well posed to detect planetary mass companions at several to tens of AU in nearby transition disks. We present non-redundant masking observations of the T Cha and LkCa 15 transition disks, both of which host posited sub-stellar mass companions. However, due to a loss of information intrinsic to the technique, observations of extended sources (e.g. scattered light from disks) can be misinterpreted as moving companions. We discuss tests to distinguish between these two scenarios, with applications to the T Cha and LkCa 15 observations. We argue that a static, forward-scattering disk can explain the T Cha data, while LkCa 15 is best explained by multiple orbiting companions.
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