Dust traps and gas kinematic signatures in a crescent structure of a planet-forming disk

Abstract

In the past few years, ALMA unveiled a variety of substructures (rings, spirals, crescents) in the continuum emission of most protoplanetary disks imaged at high spatial resolution. While the majority of disks presents axisymmetric ring-like structures in the dust brightness distribution, some sources display asymmetric morphologies (blobs, crescents) that have been often associated to vortices and/or mechanisms generated by the presence of one or more embedded planets. In this brief research report we present the analysis of the arc structure observed in the dust continuum emission of the disk around HD~163296, using high resolution ($\sim$8~au) matched continuum data from ALMA at four wavelengths. We characterize in detail the arc structures and present a kinematic signature observed in the CS(3-2) emission at the same location. Our results indicate that the crescent is caused by differential dust trapping in a local pressure maxima, for which plausible mechanisms can be the presence of a vortex or trapping in a Lagrangian point of the planet-star system.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences. Supplementary material available at this link: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/astronomy-and-space-sciences/articles/10.3389/fspas.2026.1727532/abstract

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