No Arabic abstract
Planet-disc interactions build up local pressure maxima that may halt the radial drift of protoplanetary dust, and pile it up in rings and crescents. ALMA observations of the HD135344B disc revealed two rings in the thermal continuum stemming from ~mm-sized dust. At higher frequencies the inner ring is brighter relative to the outer ring, which is also shaped as a crescent rather than a full ring. In near-IR scattered light images, the disc is modulated by a 2-armed grand-design spiral originating inside the ALMA inner ring. Such structures may be induced by a massive companion evacuating the central cavity, and by a giant planet in the gap separating both rings, that channels the accretion of small dust and gas through its filamentary wakes while stopping the larger dust from crossing the gap. Here we present ALMA observations in the J=(2-1)CO isotopologue lines and in the adjacent continuum, with up to 12km baselines. Angular resolutions of 0.03 reveal the tentative detection of a filament connecting both rings, and which coincides with a local discontinuity in the pitch angle of the IR spiral, proposed previously as the location of the protoplanet driving this spiral. Line diagnostics suggest that turbulence, or superposed velocity components, is particularly strong in the spirals. The 12CO(2-1) 3-D rotation curve points at stellocentric accretion at radii within the inner dust ring, with a radial velocity of up to ~6%+-0.5% Keplerian, which corresponds to an excessively large accretion rate of ~2E-6M_sun/yr if all of the CO layer follows the 12CO(2-1) kinematics. This suggests that only the surface layers of the disc are undergoing accretion, and that the line broadening is due to superposed laminar flows.
In recent years spiral structures have been seen in scattered light observations and signs of vortices in millimeter images of protoplanetary disks, both probably linked with the presence of planets. We present ALMA Band 7 (335 GHz or 0.89 mm) continuum observations of the transition disk HD135344B at unprecedented spatial resolution of 0.16, using superuniform weighting. The data show that the asymmetric millimeter dust ring seen in previous work actually consists of an inner ring and an outer asymmetric structure. The outer feature is cospatial with the end of one of the spiral arms seen in scattered light, but the feature itself is not consistent with a spiral arm due to its coradiance. We propose a new possible scenario to explain the observed structures at both wavelengths. Hydrodynamical simulations show that a massive planet can generate a primary vortex (which dissipates at longer timescales, becoming an axisymmetric ring) and trigger the formation of a second generation vortex further out. Within this scenario the two spiral arms observed at scattered light originate from a planet at ~30 AU and from the secondary vortex at ~75 AU rather than a planet further out as previously reported.
Context. Despite the recent discovery of spiral-shaped features in protoplanetary discs in the near-infrared and millimetric wavelengths, there is still an active discussion to understand how they formed. In fact, the spiral waves observed in discs around young stars can be due to different physical mechanisms: planet/companion torques, gravitational perturbations or illumination effects. Aims. We study the spirals formed in the gaseous phase due to two diametrically opposed shadows cast at fixed disc locations. The shadows are created by an inclined non-precessing disc inside the cavity, which is assumed to be optically thick. In particular, we analyse the effect of these spirals on the dynamics of the dust particles and discuss their detectability in transition discs. Methods. We perform gaseous hydrodynamical simulations with shadows, then we compute the dust evolution on top of the gaseous distribution, and finally we produce synthetic ALMA observations of the dust emission based on radiative transfer calculations. Results. Our main finding is that mm- to cm-sized dust particles are efficiently trapped inside the shadow-triggered spirals. We also observe that particles of various sizes starting at different stellocentric distances are well mixed inside these pressure maxima. This dynamical effect would favour grain growth and affect the resulting composition of planetesimals in the disc. In addition, our radiative transfer calculations show spiral patterns in the disc at 1.6 {mu}m and 1.3 mm. Due to their faint thermal emission (compared to the bright inner regions of the disc) the spirals cannot be detected with ALMA. Our synthetic observations prove however that shadows are observable as dips in the thermal emission.
Spitzer Space Telescope InfraRed Array Camera (IRAC) images of M100 show numerous long filaments with regularly-spaced clumps, suggesting the associated cloud complexes formed by large-scale gravitational instabilities in shocked and accumulated gas. Optical images give no hint of this underlying regularity. The typical spacing between near infrared (NIR) clumps is ~410 pc, which is ~3 times the clump diameter, consistent with the fastest growing mode in a filament of critical line density. The IRAC magnitudes and colors of several hundred clumps are measured in the most obvious 27 filaments and elsewhere. The clump colors suggest that the dust is associated with diffuse gas, PAH emission, and local heating from star formation. Neighboring clumps on the same filament have similar magnitudes. The existence of many clumps all along the filament lengths suggests that the ages of the filaments are uniform. The observations support a model where interstellar gas is systematically accumulated over lengths exceeding several kpc, forming spiral-like filaments that spontaneously collapse into giant clouds and stellar complexes. Optical wavelengths show primarily the irregular dust debris, HII regions, and lingering star formation downstream from these primal formation sites.
Understanding the diversity of planets requires to study the morphology and the physical conditions in the protoplanetary disks in which they form. We observed and spatially resolved the disk around the ~10 Myr old protoplanetary disk HD 100453 in polarized scattered light with SPHERE/VLT at optical and near-infrared wavelengths, reaching an angular resolution of ~0.02, and an inner working angle of ~0.09. We detect polarized scattered light up to ~0.42 (~48 au) and detect a cavity, a rim with azimuthal brightness variations at an inclination of 38 degrees, two shadows and two symmetric spiral arms. The spiral arms originate near the location of the shadows, close to the semi major axis. We detect a faint spiral-like feature in the SW that can be interpreted as the scattering surface of the bottom side of the disk, if the disk is tidally truncated by the M-dwarf companion currently seen at a projected distance of ~119 au. We construct a radiative transfer model that accounts for the main characteristics of the features with an inner and outer disk misaligned by ~72 degrees. The azimuthal brightness variations along the rim are well reproduced with the scattering phase function of the model. While spirals can be triggered by the tidal interaction with the companion, the close proximity of the spirals to the shadows suggests that the shadows could also play a role. The change in stellar illumination along the rim, induces an azimuthal variation of the scale height that can contribute to the brightness variations. Dark regions in polarized images of transition disks are now detected in a handful of disks and often interpreted as shadows due to a misaligned inner disk. The origin of such a misalignment in HD 100453, and of the spirals, is unclear, and might be due to a yet-undetected massive companion inside the cavity, and on an inclined orbit.
Context. Protoplanetary disks are known to host spiral features that are observed in scattered light, ALMA continuum and more recently in CO gas emission and gas dynamics. It is however unknown if spirals in gas and dust trace the same morphology. Aims. We study the morphology and amplitude of dusty spirals as function of Stokes number and the underlying mechanisms causing a difference from gas spirals. We then construct a model to relate the deviation from Keplerian rotation in the gas to a perturbation in surface density of gas and dust. Methods. We use FARGO-3D with dust implementation to numerically study the spirals, after which the results are interpreted using a semi-analytical model. This model is tested on observational data to predict the perturbation of the spiral in gas dynamics based on the continuum data. Results. We find that the pitch angle of a spiral does not differ significantly between gas and dust. The amplitude of the dust spiral decreases with Stokes number (St) and starts to fade out at a typical St > 0.1 as the dust becomes decoupled from the gas. The semianalytical model provides an accurate and fast representation of the spiral in surface density of the dust from the gas. We find a spiral in the TW Hya velocity residual map, never seen before, which is a feature in the vertical velocity and has a kink at the continuum gap, yielding strong evidence for a planet at 99 au. Conclusions. We built a model that gives an estimate of the underlying dynamics of dust in a spiral, which can serve as a proof of planetary origin of spirals and can be a probe for the Stokes number in the disk.