Searching for Circumplanetary Dust in the Cavity of the AB Aurigae Disk with ALMA

Abstract

The young intermediate-mass star AB Aurigae is surrounded by a transition disk whose cavity contains several proposed protoplanets, including the debated source "AB Aur b" at a projected separation of $\approx 0.6$ arcsec ($\approx 93$ au). To search for circumplanetary material associated with these candidates, we have obtained the most sensitive ($\sim 20$ $\mu$Jy/beam rms) and highest angular resolution ($\sim 30$ mas) ALMA Band 7 (0.88 mm) observations of AB Aur to date. We recover the asymmetric dust ring in the continuum emission peaking at $\sim 0.9$ arcsec ($\sim 140$ au) and compact emission at the stellar position, but detect no point source at the location of AB Aur b or any of the other proposed protoplanet candidates down to a $3\sigma$ limit of $60$ $\mu$Jy. For optically thin emission, this corresponds to a dust mass of $\lesssim 0.0059M_{\oplus }$ (for a dust temperature of 40 K), comparable to the circumplanetary disk around PDS 70 c. The ${}^{12}$CO emission fills the continuum cavity, revealing inner spiral structure and a clear rotation pattern. The gas at the position of AB Aur b is smoothly connected to the ambient disk with no localized excess or obvious kinematic deviation. If any proposed candidates are accreting, their circumplanetary material must have a low dust mass, a small physical size, dust that is optically thick, or a dearth of large mm-emitting grains.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters