Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 771, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/771/1/45
Keywords
planet-disk interactions; protoplanetary disks; radiative transfer; stars: individual (TW Hya)
Categories
Funding
- NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute
- Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA [NAS 5-26555]
- NASA Astrophysics Theory Program [NNX12AD43G]
- Michelson Fellowship Program
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
- NASA
- NASA [NNX12AD43G, 52906] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
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We present a 0.5-2.2 mu m scattered light spectrum of the circumstellar disk around TW Hya from a combination of spatially resolved Hubble Space Telescope STIS spectroscopy and NICMOS coronagraphic images of the disk. We investigate the morphology of the disk at distances >40 AU over this wide range of wavelengths, and identify the presence of a depression in surface brightness at similar to 80 AU that could be caused by a gap in the disk. Additionally, we quantify the surface brightness, azimuthal symmetry, and spectral character of the disk as a function of radius. Our analysis shows that the scattering efficiency of the dust is largely neutral to blue over the observed wavelengths. We model the disk as a steady alpha-disk with an ad hoc gap structure. The thermal properties of the disk are self-consistently calculated using a three-dimensional radiative transfer code that uses ray tracing to model the heating of the disk interior and scattered light images. We find a good fit to the data over a wide range of distances from the star if we use a model disk with a partially filled gap of 30% depth at 80 AU and with a self-similar truncation knee at 100 AU. The origin of the gap is unclear, but it could arise from a transition in the nature of the disk's dust composition or the presence of a planetary companion. Based on scalings to previous hydrodynamic simulations of gap-opening criteria for embedded proto-planets, we estimate that a planetary companion forming the gap could have a mass between 6 and 28M(circle plus).
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