The distribution of accretion rates as a diagnostic of protoplanetary disc evolution

Abstract

We show that the distribution of observed accretion rates is a powerful diagnostic of protoplanetary disc physics. Accretion due to turbulent ("viscous") transport of angular momentum results in a fundamentally different distribution of accretion rates than accretion driven by magnetised disc winds. We find that a homogeneous sample of $\gtrsim$300 observed accretion rates would be sufficient to distinguish between these two mechanisms of disc accretion at high confidence, even for pessimistic assumptions. Current samples of T Tauri star accretion rates are not this large, and also suffer from significant inhomogeneity, so both viscous and wind-driven models are broadly consistent with the existing observations. If accretion is viscous, the observed accretion rates require low rates of disc photoevaporation ($\lesssim$$10^{-9}$M${}_{\odot }$yr${}^{-1}$). Uniform, homogeneous surveys of stellar accretion rates can therefore provide a clear answer to the long-standing question of how protoplanetary discs accrete.

10 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

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• Modeling JWST MIRI-MRS Observations of T Cha: Mid-IR Noble Gas Emission Tracing a Dense Disk Wind
• A question of personalities: evolution of viscous and wind-driven protoplanetary discs in the presence of dead zones
• The evolution of the $M_{\mathrm{d}}-M_{\star }$ and $\dot{M}-M_{\star }$ correlations traces protoplanetary disc dispersal
• On the diversification and dissipation of protoplanetary disks
• The survivorship bias of protoplanetary disc populations
• Timescales diagnostics for saving viscous and MHD-driven dusty discs from external photoevaporation