Far-infrared signatures and inner hole sizes of protoplanetary discs undergoing inside-out dust dispersal
Abstract
By means of radiative transfer simulation, we study the evolution of the far-infrared colours of protoplanetary discs undergoing inside-out dispersal, often referred to as transition discs. We show that a brightening of the mid- and far-infrared emission from these objects is a natural consequence of the removal of the inner disc. Our results can fully explain recent observations of transition discs in the Chamaleon and Lupus star-forming regions from the Herschel Gould Belt Survey,which shows a higher median for the 70 μm (Herschel PACS 1) band of known transition objects compared with primordial discs. Our theoretical results hence support the suggestion that the 70 μm band may be a powerful diagnostic for the identification of transition discs from photometry data, provided that the inner hole is larger than tens of au, depending on spectral type. Furthermore, we show that a comparison of photometry in the K, 12 μm and 70 μm bands to model tracks can provide a rough, but quick estimate of the inner hole size of these objects, provided their inclination is below ˜85° and the inner hole size is again larger than tens of au.
Citation
Ercolano , B , Koepferl , C , Owen , J & Robitaille , T 2015 , ' Far-infrared signatures and inner hole sizes of protoplanetary discs undergoing inside-out dust dispersal ' , Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , vol. 452 , no. 4 , pp. 3689-3695 . https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv1528
Publication
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0035-8711Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2015 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the final published version of the work, which was originally published at https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv1528
Description
JEO acknowledges support by NASA through Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51346.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS 5-26555.Collections
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