A dynamical measurement of the disk mass in Elias 2-27


Abstract in English

Recent multi-wavelength ALMA observations of the protoplanetary disk orbiting around Elias 2-27 revealed a two armed spiral structure. The observed morphology together with the young age of the star and the disk-to-star mass ratio estimated from dust continuum emission make this system a perfect laboratory to investigate the role of self-gravity in the early phases of star formation. This is particularly interesting if we consider that gravitational instabilities could be a fundamental first step for the formation of planetesimals and planets. In this Letter, we model the rotation curve obtained by CO data of Elias 2-27 with a theoretical rotation curve including both the disk self-gravity and the star contribution to the gravitational potential. We compare this model with a purely Keplerian one and with a simple power-law function. We find that (especially for the $^{13}$CO isotopologue) the rotation curve is better described by considering not only the star, but also the disk self-gravity. We are thus able to obtain for the first time a dynamical estimate of the disk mass of $0.08pm0.04,M_{odot}$ and the star mass of $0.46pm0.03,M_{odot}$ (in the more general case), the latter being comparable with previous estimates. From these values, we derive that the disk is 17$%$ of the star mass, meaning that it could be prone to gravitational instabilities. This result would strongly support the hypothesis that the two spiral arms are generated by gravitational instabilities.

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