No Arabic abstract
Recently, differences in Doppler shifts across the base of four close classical T Tauri star jets have been detected with the HST in optical and near-ultraviolet (NUV) emission lines, and these Doppler shifts were interpreted as rotation signatures under the assumption of steady state flow. To support this interpretation, it is necessary that the underlying disks rotate in the same sense. Agreement between disk rotation and jet rotation determined from optical lines has been verified in two cases and rejected in one case. Meanwhile, the NUV lines, which may trace faster and more collimated inner spines of the jet than optical lines, either agree or show no clear indication. We propose to perform this test on the fourth system, Th 28. We present ALMA high angular resolution Band 7 continuum, 12CO(3-2) and 13CO(2-1) observations of the circumstellar disk around the T Tauri star Th 28. We were able to detect, in CO and continuum, clear signatures of a disk in Keplerian rotation around Th28. The 12CO emission is resolved, allowing us to derive estimates of disk position angle and inclination. The large velocity separation of the peaks in 12CO, combined with the resolved extent of the emission, indicate a central stellar mass in the range 1-2 Msun. The rotation sense of the disk is well detected in both 13CO and 12CO emission lines, and this direction is opposite to that implied by the transverse Doppler shifts measured in the optical lines of the jet. The Th 28 system is the second system where counter-rotation between the disk and the optical jet is detected. These findings imply either that optical transverse velocity gradients detected with HST do not trace jet rotation or that modeling the flow with the steady assumption is not valid. In both cases jet rotation studies that rely solely on optical lines are not suitable to derive the launching radius of the jet.
Abridged: Recent simulations have explored different ways to form accretion disks around low-mass stars. We aim to present observables to differentiate a rotationally supported disk from an infalling rotating envelope toward deeply embedded young stellar objects and infer their masses and sizes. Two 3D magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) formation simulations and 2D semi-analytical model are studied. The dust temperature structure is determined through continuum radiative transfer RADMC3D modelling. A simple temperature dependent CO abundance structure is adopted and synthetic spectrally resolved submm rotational molecular lines up to $J_{rm u} = 10$ are simulated. All models predict similar compact components in continuum if observed at the spatial resolutions of 0.5-1$$ (70-140 AU) typical of the observations to date. A spatial resolution of $sim$14 AU and high dynamic range ($> 1000$) are required to differentiate between RSD and pseudo-disk in the continuum. The peak-position velocity diagrams indicate that the pseudo-disk shows a flatter velocity profile with radius than an RSD. On larger-scales, the CO isotopolog single-dish line profiles are similar and are narrower than the observed line widths of low-$J$ lines, indicating significant turbulence in the large-scale envelopes. However a forming RSD can provide the observed line widths of high-$J$ lines. Thus, either RSDs are common or a higher level of turbulence ($b sim 0.8 {rm km s^{-1}}$ ) is required in the inner envelope compared with the outer part. Multiple spatially and spectrally resolved molecular line observations are needed. The continuum data give a better estimate on disk masses whereas the disk sizes can be estimated from the spatially resolved molecular lines observations. The general observable trends are similar between the 2D semi-analytical models and 3D MHD RSD simulations.
We present results from our SMA observations and data analyses of the SMA archival data of the Class I protostar IRAS 04169+2702. The high-resolution (~0.5) $^{13}$CO (3-2) image cube shows a compact ($r$ ~< 100 au) structure with a northwest (blue) to southeast (red) velocity gradient, centered on the 0.9-mm dust-continuum emission. The direction of the velocity gradient is orthogonal to the axis of the molecular outflow as seen in the SMA $^{12}$CO (2-1) data. A similar gas component is seen in the SO (6$_5$-5$_4$) line. On the other hand, the C$^{18}$O (2-1) emission traces a more extended ($r$ ~400 au) component with the opposite, northwest (red) to southeast (blue) velocity gradient. Such opposite velocity gradients in the different molecular lines are also confirmed from direct fitting to the visibility data. We have constructed models of a forward-rotating and counter-rotating Keplerian disk and a protostellar envelope, including the SMA imaging simulations. The counter-rotating model could better reproduce the observed velocity channel maps, although we could not obtain statistically significant fitting results. The derived model parameters are; Keplerian radius of 200 au, central stellar mass of 0.1 $M_{solar}$, and envelope rotational and infalling velocities of 0.20 km s$^{-1}$ and 0.16 km s$^{-1}$, respectively. One possible interpretation for these results is the effect of the magnetic field in the process of disk formation around protostars, $i.e.$, Hall effect.
We have recently obtained polarimetric data at mm wavelengths with ALMA for the young systems DG Tau and CW Tau, for which the rotation properties of jet and disk have been investigated in previous high angular resolution studies. The motivation was to test the models of magneto-centrifugal launch of jets via the determination of the magnetic configuration at the disk surface. The analysis of these data, however, reveals that self-scattering of dust thermal radiation dominates the polarization pattern. It is shown that even if no information on the magnetic field can be derived in this case, the polarization data are a powerful tool for the diagnostics of the properties and the evolution of dust in protoplanetary disks.
Context: Th 28 is a Classical T Tauri star in the Lupus 3 cloud which drives an extended bipolar jet. Previous studies of the inner jet identified signatures of rotation around the outflow axis, a key result for theories of jet launching. Thus this is an important source in which to investigate the poorly understood jet launching mechanism. We investigate the morphology and kinematics of the Th 28 micro-jets with the aim of characterizing their structure and outflow activity, using optical integral-field spectroscopy observations obtained with VLT/MUSE. We use spectro-imaging and position-velocity maps to investigate the kinematic and morphological features of the jet, and obtain a catalogue of emission lines in which the jet is visible. A Lucy-Richardson deconvolution procedure is used to differentiate the structure of the inner micro-jet region. Spatial profiles extracted perpendicular to the jet axis are fitted to investigate the jet width, opening angle and the evolution of the jet axis. We confirm the previously identified knot HHW$_{2}$ within the red-shifted jet and identify three additional knots in each lobe for the first time. We also find [O III]$lambda$5007 emission from the blue-shifted micro-jet including the knot closest to the star. Proper motions for the innermost knots on each side are estimated and we show that new knots are ejected on an approximate timescale of 10-15 years. The jet axis centroids show a point-symmetric wiggle within the inner portion of both micro-jets indicating precession. We use the jet shape to measure a precession period of 8 years, with a half-opening angle < 0.6$^{circ}$. This may provide an alternative explanation for the rotation signatures previously reported. We find the jet shape to be compatible with precession due to a brown dwarf companion orbiting at a separation $leq$ 0.3 au.
As protostars evolve from optically faint / infrared bright (Class I) sources to optically bright / infrared faint (Class II) the solid material in their surrounding disks accumulates into planetesimals and protoplanets. The nearby, young Ophiuchus star-forming region contains hundreds of protostars in a range of evolutionary states. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array to observe their millimeter continuum emission, we have measured masses of, or placed strong upper limits on, the dust content of 279 disks. The masses follow a log-normal distribution with a clear trend of decreasing mass from less to more evolved protostellar infrared class. The (logarithmic) mean Class I disk mass, M = 3.8 M_Earth, is about 5 times greater than the mean Class II disk mass, but the dispersion in each class is so high, sigma(logM) ~ 0.8-1, that there is a large overlap between the two distributions. The disk mass distribution of flat-spectrum protostars lies in between Classes I and II. In addition, three Class III sources with little to no infrared excess are detected with low disk masses, M ~ 0.3 M_Earth. Despite the clear trend of decreasing disk mass with protostellar evolutionary state in this region, a comparison with surveys of Class II disks in other regions shows that masses do not decrease monotonically with age. This suggests that the cloud-scale environment may determine the initial disk mass scale or that there is substantial dust regeneration after 1 Myr.