The Complete Census of 70-um-Bright Debris Disks within the FEPS (Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems) Spitzer Legacy Survey of Sun-like Stars

Abstract

(abbreviated) We report detection with the Spitzer Space Telescope of cool dust surrounding solar type stars. The observations were performed as part of the Legacy Science Program, ``Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems'' (FEPS). From the overall FEPS sample (Meyer et al. 2006) of 328 stars having ages ~0.003-3 Gyr we have selected sources with 70 um flux densities indicating excess in their spectral energy distributions above expected photospheric emission........ .....The rising spectral energy distributions towards - and perhaps beyond - 70 um imply dust temperatures T_dust <45-85 K for debris in equilibrium with the stellar radiation field. We infer bulk properties such as characteristic temperature, location, fractional luminosity, and mass of the dust from fitted single temperature blackbody models. For >1/3 of the debris sources we find that multiple temperature components are suggested, implying a spatial distribution of dust extending over many tens of AU. Because the disks are dominated by collisional processes, the parent body (planetesimal) belts may be extended as well. Preliminary assessment of the statistics of cold debris around sun-like stars shows that ~10% of FEPS targets with masses between 0.6 and 1.8 Msun and ages between 30 Myr and 3 Gyr exhibit 70 um emission in excess of the expected photospheric flux density. We find that fractional excess amplitudes appear higher for younger stars and that there may be a trend in 70 um excess frequency with stellar mass.

article accepted to ApJ

References in corpus (3)

• Dynamics of the giant planets of the solar system in the gaseous proto-planetary disk and relationship to the current orbital architecture
• New Debris Disks Around Nearby Main Sequence Stars: Impact on The Direct Detection of Planets
• High-Resolution Imaging of the Dust Disk around 49 Ceti

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Improved Age Estimation for Solar-Type Dwarfs Using Activity-Rotation Diagnostics
• Variations on Debris Disks: Icy Planet Formation at 30-150 AU for 1-3 Solar Mass Main Sequence Stars
• Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems (FEPS): Properties of Debris Dust around Solar-type Stars
• The History of the Solar System's Debris Disc: Observable Properties of the Kuiper Belt
• The Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems: Description of the Spitzer Legacy Science Database
• Collisional and Thermal Emission Models of Debris Disks: Towards Planetesimal Population Properties
• Long-wavelength observations of debris discs around sun-like stars
• A Spitzer Study of Debris Disks In The Young Nearby Cluster NGC 2232: Icy Planets Are Common Around ~ 1.5--3 Solar-Mass Stars
• A Possible Icy Kuiper Belt around HD 181327
• Spectroscopic metallicities of Vega-like stars
• New M dwarf debris disk candidates in NGC 2547
• Nulling interferometry: performance comparison between space and ground-based sites for exozodiacal disc detection
• The Frequency of Warm Debris Disks and Transition Disks in a Complete Sample of Intermediate-Mass GLIMPSE Stars: Placing Constraints on Disk Lifetimes
• A GLIMPSE into the Nature of Galactic Mid-IR Excesses