No Arabic abstract
Protoplanetary disks in dense, massive star-forming regions are strongly affected by their environment. How this environmental impact changes over time is an important constraint on disk evolution and external photoevaporation models. We characterize the dust emission from 179 disks in the core of the young (0.5 Myr) NGC 2024 cluster. By studying how the disk mass varies within the cluster, and comparing these disks to those in other regions, we aim to determine how external photoevaporation influences disk properties over time. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a 2.9 x 2.9 mosaic centered on NGC 2024 FIR 3 was observed at 225 GHz with a resolution of 0.25, or ~100 AU. The imaged region contains 179 disks identified at IR wavelengths, seven new disk candidates, and several protostars. The overall detection rate of disks is $32 pm 4%$. Few of the disks are resolved, with the exception of a giant (R = 300 AU) transition disk. Serendipitously, we observe a millimeter flare from an X-ray bright young stellar object (YSO), and resolve continuum emission from a Class 0 YSO in the FIR 3 core. Two distinct disk populations are present: a more massive one in the east, along the dense molecular ridge hosting the FIR 1-5 YSOs, with a detection rate of $45 pm 7%$. In the western population, towards IRS 1, only $15 pm 4%$ of disks are detected. NGC 2024 hosts two distinct disk populations. Disks along the dense molecular ridge are young (0.2 - 0.5 Myr) and partly shielded from the far ultraviolet radiation of IRS 2b; their masses are similar to isolated 1 - 3 Myr old SFRs. The western population is older and at lower extinctions, and may be affected by external photoevaporation from both IRS 1 and IRS 2b. However, it is possible these disks had lower masses to begin with.
A recent survey of the inner $0.35times0.35$pc of the NGC 2024 star forming region revealed two distinct millimetre continuum disc populations that appear to be spatially segregated by the boundary of a dense cloud. The eastern (and more embedded) population is $sim0.2-0.5$Myr old, with an ALMA mm continuum disc detection rate of about $45,$per cent. However this drops to only $sim15$per cent in the 1Myr western population. When presenting this result, van Terwisga et al. (2020) suggested that the two main UV sources, IRS 1 (a B0.5V star in the western region) and IRS 2b (an O8V star in the eastern region, but embedded) have both been evaporating the discs in the depleted western population. In this paper we report the firm discovery in archival HST data of 4 proplyds and 4 further candidate proplyds in NGC 2024, confirming that external photoevaporation of discs is occurring. However, the locations of these proplyds changes the picture. Only three of them are in the depleted western population and their evaporation is dominated by IRS 1, with no obvious impact from IRS 2b. The other 5 proplyds are in the younger eastern region and being evaporated by IRS 2b. We propose that both populations are subject to significant external photoevaporation, which happens throughout the region wherever discs are not sufficiently shielded by the interstellar medium. The external photoevaporation and severe depletion of mm grains in the 0.2-0.5Myr eastern part of NGC 2024 would be in competition even with very early planet formation.
High-resolution observations of edge-on proto-planetary disks in emission from molecular species sampling different critical densities and formation pathways offer the opportunity to trace the vertical chemical and physical structures of protoplanetary disks. Based on analysis of sub-arcsecond resolution Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) archival data for the edge-on Flying Saucer disk (2MASS J16281370-2431391), we establish the vertical and radial differentiation of the disk CN emitting regions with respect to those of $^{12}$CO and CS, and we model the disk physical conditions from which the CN emission arises. We demonstrate that the disk $^{12}$CO (2-1), CN (2-1), and CS J=5-4 emitting regions decrease in scale height above the midplane, such that 12CO, CN, and CS trace layers of increasing density and decreasing temperature. We find that at radii > 100 au from the central star, CN emission arises predominantly from intermediate layers, while in the inner region of the disk, CN appears to arise from layers closer to the midplane. We investigate disk physical conditions within the CN emitting regions, as well as the ranges of CN excitation temperature and column density, via RADEX non-LTE modeling of the three brightest CN hyperfine lines. Near the disk midplane, where we derive densities nH2 ~10$^{7}$ cm$^{-3}$ at relatively low T$_{kin}$ (~12 K), we find that CN is thermalized, while sub-thermal, non-LTE conditions appear to obtain for CN emission from higher (intermediate) disk layers. We consider whether and how the particular spatial location and excitation conditions of CN emission from the Flying Saucer can be related to CN production that is governed, radially and vertically, by the degree of irradiation of the flared disk by X-rays and UV photons from the central star.
Aims: Response of a protoplanetary disk to luminosity bursts of various duration is studied with the purpose to determine the effect of the bursts on the strength and sustainability of gravitational instability in the disk. A special emphasis is paid
We present 870 $mu$m ALMA observations of polarized dust emission toward the Class II protoplanetary disk IM Lup. We find that the orientation of the polarized emission is along the minor axis of the disk, and that the value of the polarization fraction increases steadily toward the center of the disk, reaching a peak value of ~1.1%. All of these characteristics are consistent with models of self-scattering of submillimeter-wave emission from an optically thin inclined disk. The distribution of the polarization position angles across the disk reveals that while the average orientation is along the minor axis, the polarization orientations show a significant spread in angles; this can also be explained by models of pure scattering. We compare the polarization with that of the Class I/II source HL Tau. A comparison of cuts of the polarization fraction across the major and minor axes of both sources reveals that IM Lup has a substantially higher polarization fraction than HL Tau toward the center of the disk. This enhanced polarization fraction could be due a number of factors, including higher optical depth in HL Tau, or scattering by larger dust grains in the more evolved IM Lup disk. However, models yield similar maximum grain sizes for both HL Tau (72 $mu$m) and IM Lup (61 $mu$m, this work). This reveals continued tension between grain-size estimates from scattering models and from models of the dust emission spectrum, which find that the bulk of the (unpolarized) emission in disks is most likely due to millimeter (or even centimeter) sized grains.
Protoplanetary disks around young stars are the sites of planet formation. While the dust mass can be estimated using standard methods, determining the gas mass - and thus the amount of material available to form giant planets - has proven to be very difficult. Hydrogen deuteride (HD) is a promising alternative to the commonly-used gas mass tracer, CO. We aim to examine the robustness of HD as tracer of the disk gas mass, specifically the effect of gas mass on the HD FIR emission and its sensitivity to the vertical structure. Deuterium chemistry reactions relevant for HD were implemented in the thermochemical code DALI and models were run for a range of disk masses and vertical structures. The HD J=1-0 line intensity depends directly on the gas mass through a sublinear power law relation with a slope of ~0.8. Assuming no prior knowledge about the vertical structure of a disk and using only the HD 1-0 flux, gas masses can be estimated to within a factor of 2 for low mass disks (M$_{rm disk} < 10^{-3}$ M$_odot$). For more massive disks, this uncertainty increases to more than an order of magnitude. Adding the HD 2-1 line or independent information about the vertical structure can reduce this uncertainty to a factor of ~3 for all disk masses. For TW Hya, using the radial and vertical structure from Kama et al. 2016b the observations constrain the gas mass to $6cdot10^{-3}$ M$_odot$ < M$_{rm disk} < 9cdot10^{-3}$ M$_odot$. Future observations require a 5$sigma$ sensitivity of $1.8cdot10^{-20}$ W m$^{-2}$ ($2.5cdot10^{-20}$ W m$^{-2}$) and a spectral resolving power R > 300 (1000) to detect HD 1-0 (HD 2-1) for all disk masses above $10^{-5}$ M$_odot$ with a line-to-continuum ratio > 0.01. These results show that HD can be used as an independent gas mass tracer with a relatively low uncertainty and should be considered as an important science goal for future FIR missions.