No Arabic abstract
It has been recently suggested that the multiple concentric rings and gaps discovered by ALMA in many protoplanetary disks may be produced by a single planet, as a result of the complex propagation and dissipation of the multiple spiral density waves it excites in the disk. Numerical efforts to verify this idea have largely utilized the so-called locally isothermal approximation with a prescribed disk temperature profile. However, in protoplanetary disks this approximation does not provide an accurate description of the density wave dynamics on scales of tens of au. Moreover, we show that locally isothermal simulations tend to overestimate the contrast of ring and gap features, as well as misrepresent their positions, when compared to simulations in which the energy equation is evolved explicitly. This outcome is caused by the non-conservation of the angular momentum flux of linear perturbations in locally isothermal disks. We demonstrate this effect using simulations of locally isothermal and adiabatic disks (with essentially identical temperature profiles) and show how the dust distributions, probed by mm wavelength observations, differ between the two cases. Locally isothermal simulations may thus underestimate the masses of planets responsible for the formation of multiple gaps and rings on scales of tens of au observed by ALMA. We suggest that caution should be exercised in using the locally isothermal simulations to explore planet-disk interaction, as well as in other studies of wave-like phenomena in astrophysical disks.
High resolution ALMA observations of protoplanetary disks have revealed that many, if not all primordial disks consist of ring-like dust structures. The origin of these dust rings remains unclear, but a common explanation is the presence of planetary companions that have cleared gaps along their orbit and trapped the dust at the gap edge. A signature of this scenario is a decrease of gas density inside these gaps. In recent work, Isella et al. 2016 derived drops in gas density consistent with Saturn-mass planets inside the gaps in the HD163296 disk through spatially resolved CO isotopologue observations. However, as CO abundance and temperature depends on a large range of factors, the interpretation of CO emission is non-trivial. We use the physical-chemical code DALI to show that the gas temperature increases inside dust density gaps, implying that any gaps in the gas, if present, would have to be much deeper, consistent with planet masses higher than a Jupiter mass. Furthermore, we show that a model with increased grain growth at certain radii, as expected at a snowline, can reproduce the dust rings in HD163296 equally well without the need for companions. This scenario can explain both younger and older disks with observed gaps, as gaps have been seen in systems as young <1 Myr. While the origin of the rings in HD163296 remains unclear, these modeling results demonstrate that care has to be taken when interpreting CO emission in protoplanetary disk observations.
We present new Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations for three protoplanetary disks in Taurus at 2.9,mm and comparisons with previous 1.3,mm data both at an angular resolution of $sim0.1$ (15,au for the distance of Taurus). In the single-ring disk DS Tau, double-ring disk GO Tau, and multiple-ring disk DL Tau, the same rings are detected at both wavelengths, with radial locations spanning from 50 to 120,au. To quantify the dust emission morphology, the observed visibilities are modeled with a parametric prescription for the radial intensity profile. The disk outer radii, taken as 95% of the total flux encircled in the model intensity profiles, are consistent at both wavelengths for the three disks. Dust evolution models show that dust trapping in local pressure maxima in the outer disk could explain the observed patterns. Dust rings are mostly unresolved. The marginally resolved ring in DS Tau shows a tentatively narrower ring at the longer wavelength, an observational feature expected from efficient dust trapping. The spectral index ($alpha_{rm mm}$) increases outward and exhibits local minima that correspond to the peaks of dust rings, indicative of the changes in grain properties across the disks. The low optical depths ($tausim$0.1--0.2 at 2.9,mm and 0.2--0.4 at 1.3,mm) in the dust rings suggest that grains in the rings may have grown to millimeter sizes. The ubiquitous dust rings in protoplanetary disks modify the overall dynamics and evolution of dust grains, likely paving the way towards the new generation of planet formation.
We present Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) Cycle 2 observations of the 1.3 mm dust continuum emission of the protoplanetary disc surrounding the T Tauri star Elias 24 with an angular resolution of $sim 0.2$ ($sim 28$ au). The dust continuum emission map reveals a dark ring at a radial distance of $0.47$ ($sim 65$ au) from the central star, surrounded by a bright ring at $0.58$ ($sim 81$ au). In the outer disc, the radial intensity profile shows two inflection points at $0.71$ and $0.87$ ($sim 99$ and $121$ au respectively). We perform global three-dimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamic gas/dust simulations of discs hosting a migrating and accreting planet. Combining the dust density maps of small and large grains with three dimensional radiative transfer calculations, we produce synthetic ALMA observations of a variety of disc models in order to reproduce the gap- and ring-like features observed in Elias 24. We find that the dust emission across the disc is consistent with the presence of an embedded planet with a mass of $sim 0.7, mathrm{M_{mathrm{J}}}$ at an orbital radius of $sim$ 60 au. Our model suggests that the two inflection points in the radial intensity profile are due to the inward radial motion of large dust grains from the outer disc. The surface brightness map of our disc model provides a reasonable match to the gap- and ring-like structures observed in Elias 24, with an average discrepancy of $sim$ 5% of the observed fluxes around the gap region.
Many protoplanetary disks exhibit annular gaps in dust emission, which may be produced by planets. Simulations of planet-disk interaction aimed at interpreting these observations often treat the disk thermodynamics in an overly simplified manner, which does not properly capture the dynamics of planet-driven density waves driving gap formation. Here we explore substructure formation in disks using analytical calculations and hydrodynamical simulations that include a physically-motivated prescription for radiative effects associated with the planet-induced density waves. For the first time, our treatment accounts not only for cooling from the disk surface, but also for radiation transport along the disk midplane. We show that this in-plane cooling, with a characteristic timescale typically an order of magnitude shorter than the one due to surface cooling, plays a critical role in density wave propagation and dissipation (we provide a simple estimate of this timescale). We also show that viscosity, at the levels expected in protoplanetary disks ($alpha lesssim 10^{-3}$), has a negligible effect on density wave dynamics. Using synthetic maps of dust continuum emission, we find that the multiplicity and shape of the gaps produced by planets are sensitive to the physical parameters---disk temperature, mass, and opacity---that determine the damping of density waves. Planets orbiting at $lesssim 20$ au produce the most diverse variety of gap/ring structures, although significant variation is also found for planets at $gtrsim 50$ au. By improving the treatment of physics governing planet-disk coupling, our results present new ways of probing the planetary interpretation of annular substructures in disks.
We present a high angular resolution ($sim 0.2^{primeprime}$), high sensitivity ($sigma sim 0.2$ mJy) survey of the 870 $mu$m continuum emission from the circumstellar material around 49 pre-main sequence stars in the $rho$ Ophiuchus molecular cloud. Because most millimeter instruments have resided in the northern hemisphere, this represents the largest high-resolution, millimeter-wave survey of the circumstellar disk content of this cloud. Our survey of 49 systems comprises 63 stars; we detect disks associated with 29 single sources, 11 binaries, 3 triple systems and 4 transition disks. We present flux and radius distributions for these systems; in particular, this is the first presentation of a reasonably complete probability distribution of disk radii at millimeter-wavelengths. We also compare the flux distribution of these protoplanetary disks with that of the disk population of the Taurus-Auriga molecular cloud. We find that disks in binaries are both significantly smaller and have much less flux than their counterparts around isolated stars. We compute truncation calculations on our binary sources and find that these disks are too small to have been affected by tidal truncation and posit some explanations for this. Lastly, our survey found 3 candidate gapped disks, one of which is a newly identified transition disk with no signature of a dip in infrared excess in extant observations.