Accretion through the inner hole of transitional disks: What happens to the dust?

Abstract

We study the effect of radiation pressure on the dust in the inner rim of transitional disks with large inner holes. In particular, we evaluate whether radiation pressure can be responsible for keeping the inner holes dust-free, while allowing gas accretion to proceed. This has been proposed in a paper by Chiang and Murray-Clay (2007, Nature Physics 3, p. 604) who explain the formation of these holes as an inside-out evacuation due to X- ray-triggered accretion of the innermost layer of the disk rim outside of the hole. We show that radiation pressure is clearly incapable of stopping dust from flowing into the hole because of dust pile-up and optical depth effects, and also because of viscous mixing. Other mechanisms need to be found to explain the persistence of the opacity hole in the presence of accretion, and we speculate on possible solutions.

6 pages, 3 figures, Accepted for publication by Astronomy and Astrophysics

References in corpus (6)

• Dust filtration at gap edges: Implications for the spectral energy distributions of discs with embedded planets
• Photoevaporation of protoplanetary discs I: hydrodynamic models
• Transitional and Pre-Transitional disks: Gap Opening by Multiple Planets?
• X-ray irradiated protoplanetary disk atmospheres I: Predicted emission line spectrum and photoevaporation
• The Photoevaporation of Discs Around Young Stars in Massive Clusters
• Surface Layer Accretion in Transitional and Conventional Disks: From Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons to Planets

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• Dust Evolution and the Formation of Planetesimals
• Structures in the protoplanetary disk of HD142527 seen in polarized scattered light
• Small vs large dust grains in transitional disks: do different cavity sizes indicate a planet?
• Accreting planets as dust dams in `transition' discs
• Inner disk clearing around the Herbig Ae star HD\,139614: Evidence for a planet-induced gap ?
• Irradiation Instability at the Inner Edges of Accretion Disks
• Self-Sustained Recycling in the Inner Dust Ring of Pre-Transitional Disks
• Dynamics of small grains in transitional discs
• Dust Dynamics in Transitional Disks: Clumping and Disk Recession