Photoevaporation of Protoplanetary Disks

Abstract

We present HST/NICMOS Paschen alpha images and low and high resolution IRS spectra of photoevaporating disk-tail systems originally detected at 24 micron near O stars. We find no Paschen alpha emission in any of the systems. The resulting upper limits correspond to about 0.000002-0.000003 solar mass of mass in hydrogen in the tails suggesting that the gas is severely depleted. The IRAC data and the low resolution 5-12 micron IRS spectra provide evidence for an inner disk while high resolution long wavelength (14-30 micron) IRS spectra confirm the presence of a gas free ``tail'' that consists of ~ 0.01 to ~ 1 micron dust grains originating in the outer parts of the circumstellar disks. Overall our observations support theoretical predictions in which photoevaporation removes the gas relatively quickly (<= 100000 yrs) from the outer region of a protoplanetary disk but leaves an inner more robust and possibly gas-rich disk component of radius 5-10 AU. With the gas gone, larger solid bodies in the outer disk can experience a high rate of collisions and produce elevated amounts of dust. This dust is being stripped from the system by the photon pressure of the O star to form a gas-free dusty tail.

arXiv comment9 pages 5 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (11)

• Circumstellar Dust Disks in Taurus-Auriga: The Submillimeter Perspective
• Photoevaporation of Circumstellar Disks due to External FUV Radiation in Stellar Aggregates
• A Survey and Analysis of Spitzer Infrared Spectrograph Spectra of T Tauri Stars in Taurus
• Reduction Algorithms for the Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer
• Destruction of protoplanetary disks in the Orion Nebula Cluster
• The Vega Debris Disk -- A Surprise from Spitzer
• Viscous diffusion and photoevaporation of stellar disks
• SPITZER/IRAC-MIPS Survey of NGC2244: Protostellar Disk Survival in the Vicinity of Hot Stars
• Can photo-evaporation trigger planetesimal formation?
• Identifying Primordial Substructure in NGC 2264
• Spitzer/MIPS 24 micron Detection of Photoevaporating Protoplanetary Disks

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Protoplanetary Disks and Their Evolution
• The Spitzer Space Telescope Survey of the Orion A and B Molecular Clouds II: the Spatial Distribution and Demographics of Dusty Young Stellar Objects
• Formation of Giant Planets by Disk Instability on Wide Orbits Around Protostars with Varied Masses
• On the underestimation of dust mass in protoplanetary disks: Effects of disk structure and dust properties
• UV photolysis, organic molecules in young disks, and the origin of meteoritic amino acids
• The $Spitzer$ infrared spectrograph survey of protoplanetary disks in Orion A: I. disk properties
• Massive stars in the SDSS-IV/APOGEE SURVEY. I- OB stars
• Dusty OB stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud - II: Extragalactic Disks or Examples of the Pleiades Phenomenon?
• Herschel/PACS view of disks around low-mass stars and brown dwarfs in the TW Hya association
• A photometric and spectroscopic investigation of star formation in the very young open cluster NGC6383
• PDRs4All XVIII. JWST-NIRCam Photometric properties of protoplanetary disks in the Orion Nebula Cluster