Shocks and a Giant Planet in the Disk Orbiting BP Piscium?

Abstract

Spitzer IRS spectroscopy supports the interpretation that BP Piscium, a gas and dust enshrouded star residing at high Galactic latitude, is a first-ascent giant rather than a classical T Tauri star. Our analysis suggests that BP Piscium's spectral energy distribution can be modeled as a disk with a gap that is opened by a giant planet. Modeling the rich mid-infrared emission line spectrum indicates that the solid-state emitting grains orbiting BP Piscium are primarily composed of ~75 K crystalline, magnesium-rich olivine; ~75 K crystalline, magnesium-rich pyroxene; ~200 K amorphous, magnesium-rich pyroxene; and ~200 K annealed silica ('cristobalite'). These dust grains are all sub-micron sized. The giant planet and gap model also naturally explains the location and mineralogy of the small dust grains in the disk. Disk shocks that result from disk-planet interaction generate the highly crystalline dust which is subsequently blown out of the disk mid-plane and into the disk atmosphere.

25 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Accepted to ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Silicate features in Galactic and extragalactic post-AGB discs
• Warm Dust around Cool Stars: Field M Dwarfs with WISE 12 or 22 Micron Excess Emission
• Is the Young Star RZ Piscium Consuming Its Own (Planetary) Offspring?
• BP Piscium: its flaring disk imaged with SPHERE/ZIMPOL
• The Elemental Compositions of Extrasolar Planetesimals
• Jet from the enigmatic high-latitude star BP Psc and evolutionary status of its driving source