Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 702, Issue 1, Pages 724-732Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/702/1/724
Keywords
accretion, accretion disks; infrared: stars; planetary systems: protoplanetary disks; stars: individual (TW Hya, CS Cha, T Cha, VW Cha, Sz 73, Sz 102, HD 34700)
Categories
Funding
- NASA [90035375]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The lifetime of isolated protoplanetary disks is thought to be set by the combination of viscous accretion and photoevaporation driven by stellar high-energy photons. Observational evidence for magnetospheric accretion in young Sun-like stars is robust. Here we report the first observational evidence for disk photoevaporation driven by the central star. We acquired high-resolution (R similar to 30,000) spectra of the [Ne II] 12.81 mu m line from seven circumstellar disks using VISIR on Melipal/VLT. We show that the three transition disks in the sample all have [Ne II] line profiles consistent with those predicted by a photoevaporative flow driven by stellar extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) photons. The similar to 6 km s(-1) blueshift of the line from the almost face-on disk of TW Hya is clearly inconsistent with emission from a static disk atmosphere and convincingly points to the presence of a photoevaporative wind. We do not detect any [Ne II] line close to the stellar velocity from the sample of classical optically thick (nontransition) disks. We conclude that most of the spectrally unresolved [Ne II] emission in these less-evolved systems arises from jets/outflows rather than from the disk. The pattern of the [Ne II] detections and nondetections suggests that EUV-driven photoevaporation starts only at a later stage in the disk evolution.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available