TY - JOUR
T1 - PHOTO-REVERBERATION MAPPING of A PROTOPLANETARY ACCRETION DISK AROUND A T TAURI STAR
AU - Meng, Huan Y.A.
AU - Plavchan, Peter
AU - Rieke, George H.
AU - Cody, Ann Marie
AU - Güth, Tina
AU - Stauffer, John
AU - Covey, Kevin
AU - Carey, Sean
AU - Ciardi, David
AU - Duran-Rojas, Maria C.
AU - Gutermuth, Robert A.
AU - Morales-Calderón, María
AU - Rebull, Luisa M.
AU - Watson, Alan M.
N1 - Funding Information:
K.C. acknowledges support provided by the NSF through grant AST-1449476. A.M.W. thanks the staff of the Observatorio Astronomico Nacional in Sierra San Pedro Martir. This work is based in part on observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA. Support for this work was provided by NASA through an award issued by JPL/Caltech.
PY - 2016/5/20
Y1 - 2016/5/20
N2 - Theoretical models and spectroscopic observations of newborn stars suggest that protoplantary disks have an inner "wall" at a distance set by the disk interaction with the star. Around T Tauri stars, the size of this disk hole is expected to be on a 0.1 au scale that is unresolved by current adaptive optics imaging, though some model-dependent constraints have been obtained by near-infrared interferometry. Here we report the first measurement of the inner disk wall around a solar-mass young stellar object, YLW 16B in the ρ Ophiuchi star-forming region, by detecting the light-travel time of the variable radiation from the stellar surface to the disk. Consistent time lags were detected on two nights, when the time series in H (1.6 μm) and K (2.2 μm) bands were synchronized while the 4.5 μm emission lagged by 74.5 ± 3.2 s. Considering the nearly edge-on geometry of the disk, the inner rim should be 0.084 au from the protostar on average, with an error of order 0.01 au. This size is likely larger than the range of magnetospheric truncations and consistent with an optically and geometrically thick disk front at the dust sublimation radius at ∼1500 K. The widths of the cross-correlation functions between the data in different wavebands place possible new constraints on the geometry of the disk.
AB - Theoretical models and spectroscopic observations of newborn stars suggest that protoplantary disks have an inner "wall" at a distance set by the disk interaction with the star. Around T Tauri stars, the size of this disk hole is expected to be on a 0.1 au scale that is unresolved by current adaptive optics imaging, though some model-dependent constraints have been obtained by near-infrared interferometry. Here we report the first measurement of the inner disk wall around a solar-mass young stellar object, YLW 16B in the ρ Ophiuchi star-forming region, by detecting the light-travel time of the variable radiation from the stellar surface to the disk. Consistent time lags were detected on two nights, when the time series in H (1.6 μm) and K (2.2 μm) bands were synchronized while the 4.5 μm emission lagged by 74.5 ± 3.2 s. Considering the nearly edge-on geometry of the disk, the inner rim should be 0.084 au from the protostar on average, with an error of order 0.01 au. This size is likely larger than the range of magnetospheric truncations and consistent with an optically and geometrically thick disk front at the dust sublimation radius at ∼1500 K. The widths of the cross-correlation functions between the data in different wavebands place possible new constraints on the geometry of the disk.
KW - accretion, accretion disks
KW - circumstellar matter
KW - protoplanetary disks
KW - stars: individual (YLW 16B)
KW - stars: variables: T Tauri, Herbig Ae/Be
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U2 - 10.3847/0004-637X/823/1/58
DO - 10.3847/0004-637X/823/1/58
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84971508174
VL - 823
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
SN - 0004-637X
IS - 1
M1 - 58
ER -