The ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures (ARKS) III: The vertical structure of debris disks

Abstract

Debris disks -- collisionally sustained belts of dust and sometimes gas around main sequence stars -- are remnants of planet formation processes and are found in systems $\gtrsim 10$ Myr old. Millimeter-wavelength observations are particularly important, as the grains probed by these observations are not strongly affected by radiation pressure and stellar winds, allowing them to probe the dynamics of large bodies producing dust. The ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures (ARKS) is analyzing high-resolution observations of 24 debris disks to enable the characterization of debris disk substructures across a large sample for the first time. For the most highly inclined disks, it is possible to recover the vertical structure of the disk. We aim to model and analyze the most highly inclined systems in the ARKS sample in order to uniformly extract the vertical dust distributions for a sample of well-resolved debris disks. We employed both parametric and nonparametric methods to constrain the vertical dust distributions for the most highly inclined ARKS targets. We find a broad range of aspect ratios, revealing a wide diversity in vertical structure, with a range of best-fit parametric values of $0.0026\le h_{\mathrm{HWHM}}\le 0.193$ and a median best-fit value of $h_{\mathrm{HWHM}}=0.021$. The results obtained by nonparametric modeling are generally consistent with the parametric modeling results. We find that five of the 13 disks are consistent with having total disk masses less than that of Neptune (17 $M_{\oplus }$), assuming stirring by internal processes (self-stirring and collisional and frictional damping). Furthermore, most systems show a significant preference for a Lorentzian vertical profile rather than a Gaussian.

31 pages, 12 figures, published in A&A

References in corpus (40)

• Origin of the Structure of the Kuiper Belt during a Dynamical Instability in the Orbits of Uranus and Neptune
• Variations on Debris Disks: Icy Planet Formation at 30-150 AU for 1-3 Solar Mass Main Sequence Stars
• HST/ACS Multiband Coronagraphic Imaging of the Debris Disk around Beta Pictoris
• Collisional processes and size distribution in spatially extended debris discs
• Formation of close in Super-Earths \& Mini-Neptunes: Required Disk Masses \& Their Implications
• Kuiper Belt-Like Hot and Cold Populations of Planetesimal Inclinations in the $\beta$ Pictoris Belt Revealed by ALMA
• Dynamical evolution of an eccentric planet and a less massive debris disc
• Frankenstein: Protoplanetary disc brightness profile reconstruction at sub-beam resolution with a rapid Gaussian process
• Estimate on dust scale height from ALMA dust continuum image of the HD 163296 protoplanetary disk
• Solution to the debris disc mass problem: planetesimals are born small?
• The Inner Disk Structure, Disk-Planet Interactions, and Temporal Evolution in the Beta Pictoris System: A Two-Epoch HST/STIS Coronagraphic Study
• The Mass of Stirring Bodies in the AU Mic Debris Disk Inferred from Resolved Vertical Structure
• ALMA observations of the narrow HR 4796A debris ring
• Multiple Rings of Millimeter Dust Emission in the HD 15115 Debris Disk
• The vertical structure of debris disks and the impact of gas
• HD 106906: A Case Study for External Perturbations of a Debris Disk
• High resolution ALMA and HST images of q${}^1$ Eri: an asymmetric debris disc with an eccentric Jupiter
• Very deep images of the innermost regions of the beta Pictoris debris disc at Lp
• The challenge of measuring the phase function of debris disks. Application to HR\,4796
• Constraining planetesimal stirring: how sharp are debris disc edges?
• Investigating the presence of two belts in the HD 15115 system
• ALMA Observations of the HD~110058 debris disk
• Deprojecting and constraining the vertical thickness of exoKuiper belts
• Vertical evolution of exocometary gas: I. How vertical diffusion shortens the CO lifetime
• Imaging an 80 AU Radius Dust Ring Around the F5V Star HD 157587
• Stirred but not shaken: a multi-wavelength view of HD 16743's debris disc
• Rave: A non-parametric method for recovering the surface brightness and height profiles of edge-on debris disks
• The ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures (ARKS) II. The radial structure of debris discs
• Multiwavelength Vertical Structure in the AU Mic Debris Disk: Characterizing the Collisional Cascade
• The ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures (ARKS) I: Motivation, sample, data reduction, and results overview
• Two cold belts in the debris disk around the G-type star NZ Lup
• The case of HD 106906 debris disc: A binary's revenge
• Debris Disks in Multi-Planet Systems: Are Our Inferences Compromised by Unseen Planets?
• Inclination Excitation of Solar System Debris Disk due to Stellar Flybys
• The vertical structure of debris discs and the role of disc gravity: A primer using a simplified model
• Self-gravity of debris discs can strongly change the outcomes of interactions with inclined planets
• Formation History of HD106906 and the Vertical Warping of Debris Disks by an External Inclined Companion
• Radial Profiles of Surface Density in Debris Discs
• Collisional damping in debris discs: Only significant if collision velocities are low
• Formation of the warped debris disc around $\beta$ Pictoris

Cited by in corpus (3)

• The ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures (ARKS): VI. Asymmetries and offsets
• The ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures (ARKS) V: Comparison between scattered light and thermal emission
• The ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures (ARKS) IV: CO gas imaging and overview