No Arabic abstract
Protoplanetary disks are the birthplaces of planetary systems. The evolution of the star-disk system and the disk chemical composition determines the initial conditions for planet formation. Therefore a comprehensive understanding of the main physical and chemical processes in disks is crucial for our understanding of planet formation. We give an overview of the early evolution of disks, discuss the importance of the stellar high-energy radiation for disk evolution and describe the general thermal and chemical structure of disks. Finally we provide an overview of observational tracers of the gas component and disk winds.
Measurements of the gas mass are necessary to determine the planet formation potential of protoplanetary disks. Observations of rare CO isotopologues are typically used to determine disk gas masses; however, if the line emission is optically thick this will result in an underestimated disk mass. With ALMA we have detected the rarest stable CO isotopologue, 13C17O, in a protoplanetary disk for the first time. We compare our observations with the existing detections of 12CO, 13CO, C18O and C17O in the HD163296 disk. Radiative transfer modelling using a previously benchmarked model, and assuming interstellar isotopic abundances, significantly underestimates the integrated intensity of the 13C17O J=3-2 line. Reconciliation between the observations and the model requires a global increase in CO gas mass by a factor of 3.5. This is a factor of 2-6 larger than previous gas mass estimates using C18O. We find that C18O emission is optically thick within the CO snow line, while the 13C17O emission is optically thin and is thus a robust tracer of the bulk disk CO gas mass.
We present new Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) 1.3 mm continuum observations of the SR 24S transition disk with an angular resolution $lesssim0.18$ (12 au radius). We perform a multi-wavelength investigation by combining new data with previous ALMA data at 0.45 mm. The visibilities and images of the continuum emission at the two wavelengths are well characterized by a ring-like emission. Visibility modeling finds that the ring-like emission is narrower at longer wavelengths, in good agreement with models of dust trapping in pressure bumps, although there are complex residuals that suggest potentially asymmetric structures. The 0.45 mm emission has a shallower profile inside the central cavity than the 1.3 mm emission. In addition, we find that the $^{13}$CO and C$^{18}$O (J=2-1) emission peaks at the center of the continuum cavity. We do not detect either continuum or gas emission from the northern companion to this system (SR 24N), which is itself a binary system. The upper limit for the dust disk mass of SR 24N is $lesssim 0.12,M_{bigoplus}$, which gives a disk mass ratio in dust between the two components of $M_{mathrm{dust, SR,24S}}/M_{mathrm{dust, SR,24N}}gtrsim840$. The current ALMA observations may imply that either planets have already formed in the SR 24N disk or that dust growth to mm-sizes is inhibited there and that only warm gas, as seen by ro-vibrational CO emission inside the truncation radii of the binary, is present.
Transitional disks show a lack of excess emission at infrared wavelengths due to a large dust cavity, that is often corroborated by spatially resolved observations at ~ mm wavelengths. We present the first spatially resolved ~ mm-wavelength images of the disk around the Herbig Ae/Be star, HD 97048. Scattered light images show that the disk extends to ~640 au. The ALMA data reveal a circular-symmetric dusty disk extending to ~350 au, and a molecular disk traced in CO J=3-2 emission, extending to ~750 au. The CO emission arises from a flared layer with an opening angle ~ 30 deg - 40 deg. HD 97048 is another source for which the large (~ mm-sized) dust grains are more centrally concentrated than the small (~ {mu}m-sized) grains and molecular gas, likely due to radial drift. The images and visibility data modelling suggests a decrement in continuum emission within ~50 au, consistent with the cavity size determined from mid-infrared imaging (34 +/- 4 au). The extracted continuum intensity profiles show ring-like structures with peaks at ~50, 150, and 300 au, with associated gaps at ~100 and 250 au. This structure should be confirmed in higher-resolution images (FWHM ~ 10 - 20 au). These data confirm the classification of HD 97048 as a transitional disk that also possesses multiple ring-like structures in the dust continuum emission. Additional data are required at multiple and well-separated frequencies to fully characterise the disk structure, and thereby constrain the mechanism(s) responsible for sculpting the HD 97048 disk.
A key problem in protoplanetary disc evolution is understanding the efficiency of dust radial drift. This process makes the observed dust disc sizes shrink on relatively short timescales, implying that discs started much larger than what we see now. In this paper we use an independent constraint, the gas radius (as probed by CO rotational emission), to test disc evolution models. In particular, we consider the ratio between the dust and gas radius, $R_{rm CO}/R_{rm dust}$. We model the time evolution of protoplanetary discs under the influence of viscous evolution, grain growth, and radial drift. Then, using the radiative transfer code RADMC with approximate chemistry, we compute the dust and gas radii of the models and investigate how $R_{rm CO}/R_{rm dust}$ evolves. Our main finding is that, for a broad range of values of disc mass, initial radius, and viscosity, $R_{rm CO}/R_{rm dust}$ becomes large (>5) after only a short time (<1 Myr) due to radial drift. This is at odds with measurements in young star forming regions such as Lupus, which find much smaller values, implying that dust radial drift is too efficient in these models. Substructures, commonly invoked to stop radial drift in large, bright discs, must then be present, although currently unresolved, in most discs.
We present Atacama Large Millimeter Array CO(3$-$2) and HCO$^+$(4$-$3) observations covering the central $1rlap{.}5$$times$$1rlap{.}5$ region of the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC). The unprecedented level of sensitivity ($sim$0.1 mJy beam$^{-1}$) and angular resolution ($sim$$0rlap{.}09 approx 35$ AU) of these line observations enable us to search for gas-disk detections towards the known positions of submillimeter-detected dust disks in this region. We detect 23 disks in gas: 17 in CO(3$-$2), 17 in HCO$^+$(4$-$3), and 11 in both lines. Depending on where the sources are located in the ONC, we see the line detections in emission, in absorption against the warm background, or in both emission and absorption. We spectrally resolve the gas with $0.5$ km s$^{-1}$ channels, and find that the kinematics of most sources are consistent with Keplerian rotation. We measure the distribution of gas-disk sizes and find typical radii of $sim$50-200 AU. As such, gas disks in the ONC are compact in comparison with the gas disks seen in low-density star-forming regions. Gas sizes are universally larger than the dust sizes. However, the gas and dust sizes are not strongly correlated. We find a positive correlation between gas size and distance from the massive star $theta^1$ Ori C, indicating that disks in the ONC are influenced by photoionization. Finally, we use the observed kinematics of the detected gas lines to model Keplerian rotation and infer the masses of the central pre-main-sequence stars. Our dynamically-derived stellar masses are not consistent with the spectroscopically-derived masses, and we discuss possible reasons for this discrepancy.