Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: Extreme outbursts in young stars may be a common stage of pre-main-sequence stellar evolution. These outbursts, caused by enhanced accretion and accompanied by increased luminosity, can also strongly impact the evolution of the circumstellar environment. We present Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and Very Large Array observations of EX Lupi, a prototypical outburst system, at 100, 45, and 15 GHz. We use these data, along with archival ALMA 232 GHz data, to fit radiative transfer models to EX Lupi’s circumstellar disk in its quiescent state following the extreme outburst in 2008. The best-fit models show a compact disk with a characteristic dust radius of 45 au and a total mass of 0.01 M ⊙. Our modeling suggests grain growth to sizes of at least 3 mm in the disk, possibly spurred by the recent outburst, and an ice line that has migrated inward to 0.2–0.3 au post-outburst. At 15 GHz, we detected significant emission over the expected thermal disk emission which we attribute primarily to stellar (gyro)synchrotron and free–free disk emission. Altogether, these results highlight what may be a common impact of outbursts on the circumstellar dust.
Source: The Astrophysical Journal
Authors: Jacob Aaron White, Á. Kóspál, A. G. Hughes, P. Ábrahám, V. Akimkin, A. Banzatti, L. Chen, F. Cruz-Sáenz de Miera, A. Dutrey, M. Flock, S. Guilloteau, A. S. Hales, T. Henning, K. Kadam, D. Semenov, A. Sicilia-Aguilar, R. Teague, E. I. Vorobyov
Institutions: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Konkoly Observatory, HUN-REN Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences, Eötvös Loránd University, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Astronomy, Texas State University, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université de Bordeaux, Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux, Atacama Large Millimeter Submillimeter Array, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, University of Dundee, Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian, University of Vienna
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W3091536308