Radiative Transfer Models of a Possible Planet in the AB Aurigae Disk

Abstract

Recent coronagraphic imaging of the AB Aurigae disk has revealed a region of low polarized scattered light suggestive of perturbations from a planet at a radius of ~100 AU. We model this darkened region using our fully non-plane-parallel radiative-transfer code combined with a simple hydrostatic equilibirum approximation to self-consistently solve for the structure of the disk surface as seen in scattered light. By comparing the observations to our models, we find that the observations are consistent with the absence of a planet, with an upper limit of 1 Jupiter mass.

Accepted to ApJ Letters

References in corpus (9)

• Direct Imaging of Multiple Planets Orbiting the Star HR 8799
• Optical Images of an Exosolar Planet 25 Light Years from Earth
• Accretion Rates in Herbig Ae stars
• The Case of AB Aurigae's Disk in Polarized Light: Is There Truly a Gap?
• Signatures of Planet Formation in Gravitationally Unstable Disks
• Planet Shadows in Protoplanetary Disks. II: Observable Signatures
• Chemistry in Disks. II. -- Poor molecular content of the AB Aur disk
• Planet Shadows in Protoplanetary Disks. I: Temperature Perturbations
• Mid-Infrared Imaging of the Herbig Ae Star AB Aurigae: Extended Emission on Several Scales

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Direct Imaging of Fine Structures in Giant Planet Forming Regions of the Protoplanetary Disk around AB Aurigae
• Gaps in Protoplanetary Disks as Signatures of Planets: I. Methodology and Validation
• Stirring up the dust: A dynamical model for halo-like dust clouds in transitional disks
• Pre-transitional disk nature of the AB Aur disk
• The Structure of a Self-Gravitating Protoplanetary Disk and its Implications to Direct Imaging Observations
• Constraining the Movement of the Spiral Features and the Locations of Planetary Bodies within the AB Aur System
• Gaps in Protoplanetary Disks as Signatures of Planets: III. Polarization