Searching for Magnetospheres around Herbig Ae/Be Stars

We describe four different approaches for the detection of magnetospheric accretion among Herbig Ae/Be stars with accretion disks. Studies of several unique objects have been carried out. One of the objects is the Herbig Ae star HD 101412 with a comparatively strong magnetic field. The second is the early-type Herbig B6e star HD 259431. The existence of a magnetosphere in these objects was not recognized earlier. In both cases, a periodicity in the variation of some line parameters, originating near the region of the disk/star interaction, has been found. The third object is the young binary system HD 104237, hosting a Herbig Ae star and a T Tauri star. Based on the discovery of periodic variations of equivalent widths of atmospheric lines in the spectrum of the primary, we have concluded that the surface of the star is spotted. Comparing our result with an earlier one, we argue that these spots can be connected with the infall of material from the disk onto the stellar surface through a magnetosphere. The fourth example is the Herbig Ae/Be star HD 37806. Signatures of magnetospheric accretion in this object have been identified using a different method. They were inferred from the short-term variability of the He i λ5876 line profile forming in the region of the disk/star interaction.

Stellar Rotation of T Tauri Stars in the Orion Star-forming Complex

We present a large-scale study of stellar rotation for T Tauri stars in the Orion star-forming complex. We use the projected rotational velocity ( v sin ( i ) ) estimations reported by the APOGEE-2 collaboration as well as individual masses and ages derived from the position of the stars in the HR diagram, considering Gaia-EDR3 parallaxes and photometry plus diverse evolutionary models. We find an empirical trend for v sin ( i ) decreasing with age for low-mass stars (0.4M ⊙ < M * < 1.2M ⊙). Our results support the existence of a mechanism linking v sin ( i ) to the presence of accreting protoplanetary disks, responsible for regulating stellar rotation on timescales of about 6 Myr, which is the timescale in which most of the T Tauri stars lose their inner disk. Our results provide important constraints to models of rotation in the early phases of evolution of young stars and their disks.

Classical T Tauri stars: accretion, wind, dust

Classical T Tauri stars (CTTS) are at the early evolutionary stage when the processes of planet formation take place in the surrounding accretion disks. Most of the observed activity in CTTS is due to magnetospheric accretion and wind flows. Observations of the accreting gas flows and appearance of the line-dependent veiling of the photospheric spectrum in CTTS are considered. Evidence for the dusty wind causing the observed irregular variability of CTTS is presented. Photometric and spectroscopic monitoring of two CTTS, RY Tau and SU Aur, has been carried out atthe Crimean Astrophysical Observatory since 2013 aimed at studying the dynamics of accretion and wind flows on time scales from days to years. The observed variations in the dynamical parameters may be caused by changes in the accretion rate and in the global magnetic fields of CTTS.

Disk Masses and Dust Evolution of Protoplanetary Disks around Brown Dwarfs

We present the largest sample of brown dwarf (BD) protoplanetary disk spectral energy distributions modeled to date. We compile 49 objects with ALMA observations from four star-forming regions: ρ Ophiuchus, Taurus, Lupus, and Upper Scorpius. Studying multiple regions with various ages enables us to probe disk evolution over time. Specifically, from our models, we obtain values for dust grain sizes, dust settling, and disk mass; we compare how each of these parameters vary between the regions. We find that disk mass decreases with age. We also find evidence of disk evolution (i.e., grain growth and significant dust settling) in all four regions, indicating that planet formation and disk evolution may begin to occur at earlier stages. We generally find that these disks contain too little mass to form planetary companions, though we cannot rule out that planet formation may have already occurred. Finally, we examine the disk mass–host mass relationship and find that BD disks are largely consistent with previously determined relationships for disks around T Tauri stars.

Probing Protoplanetary Disk Winds with C ii Absorption

We present an analysis of wind absorption in the C ii λ1335 doublet toward 40 classical T Tauri stars with archival far-ultraviolet (FUV) spectra obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope. Absorption features produced by fast or slow winds are commonly detected (36 out of 40 targets) in our sample. The wind velocity of the fast wind decreases with disk inclination, which is consistent with expectations for a collimated jet. Slow wind absorption is mostly detected in disks with intermediate or high inclination, without a significant dependence of wind velocity on disk inclination. Both the fast and slow wind absorption are preferentially detected in FUV lines of neutral or singly ionized atoms. The Mg ii λ λ2796, 2804 lines show wind absorption consistent with the absorption in the C ii lines. We develop simplified semi-analytical disk/wind models to interpret the observational disk wind absorption. Both fast and slow winds are consistent with expectations from a thermal-magnetized disk wind model and are generally inconsistent with a purely thermal wind. Both the models and the observational analysis indicate that wind absorption occurs preferentially from the inner disk, which offers a wind diagnostic in complement to optical forbidden line emission that traces the wind in larger volumes.

The First Detection of CH2CN in a Protoplanetary Disk

We report the first detection of the molecule cyanomethyl, CH2CN, in a protoplanetary disk. Until now, CH2CN had only been observed at earlier evolutionary stages, in the molecular clouds TMC-1, Sgr2, and L483, in the prestellar core L1544, and toward the protostar L1527. We detect six transitions of ortho-CH2CN toward the disk around nearby T Tauri star TW Hya. An excitation analysis reveals that the disk-averaged column density, N , for ortho-CH2CN is (6.3 ± 0.5) × 1012 cm−2, which is rescaled to reflect a 3:1 ortho-para ratio, resulting in a total column density, N tot, of (8.4 ± 0.7) × 1012 cm−2. We calculate a disk-average rotational temperature, T rot = 40 ± 5 K, while a radially resolved analysis shows that T rot remains relatively constant across the radius of the disk. This high rotation temperature suggests that in a static disk and if vertical mixing can be neglected, CH2CN is largely formed through gas-phase reactions in the upper layers of the disk, rather than solid-state reactions on the surface of grains in the disk midplane. The integrated intensity radial profiles show a ring structure consistent with molecules such as CN and DCN. We note that this is also consistent with previous lower-resolution observations of centrally peaked CH3CN emission toward the TW Hya disks, since the observed emission gap disappears when convolving our observations with a larger beam size. We obtain a CH2CN/CH3CN ratio ranging between 4 and 10. This high CH2CN/CH3CN is reproduced in a representative chemical model of the TW Hya disk that employs standard static disk chemistry model assumptions, i.e., without any additional tuning.

T Tauri stars: magnetic fields and planets

In this short review we present the results of a study of the large-scale magnetic topologies of T Tauri stars (TTS). A small spectropolarimetric survey of 8 young stars was carried out within two international projects MaPP (Magnetic Protostars and Planets) and MaTYSSE (Magnetic Topologies of Young Stars and the Survival of massive close-in Exoplanets) between 2009 and 2016. For each of our targets we reconstructed the brightness map and the magnetic field topology using Zeeman–Doppler imaging (ZDI). This review contains a brief description of spectropolarimetricdata, the ZDI method, one example of the reconstruction of brightness and magnetic maps, and the properties of magnetic fields of 8 TTS. Our results suggest that AA Tau and LkCa 15 interact with their disks in the propeller mode when their rotation is actively slowed by the star/disk magnetic coupling. We find that magnetic fields of some TTS are variable on a time scale of a few years and are thus intrinsically nonstationary. We report on the detection of a giant exoplanet around V830 Tau and TAP 26. These two new detections suggest that the type II disk migration is efficient at generating newborn hot Jupiters (hJs) around young TTS. The result of our survey is compared to the global picture of magnetic field properties of twenty TTS in the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram. The comparison shows that WTTS exhibit a wider range of field topologies as compared to CTTS, and that magnetic fields of all TTS (CTTS and WTTS as a whole) are mostly poloidal and axisymmetric when they are mostly convective and cooler than 4300 K. This needs to be confirmed with a larger sample of stars.

An unbiased NOEMA 2.6 to 4 mm survey of the GG Tau ring: First detection of CCS in a protoplanetary disk

Context. Molecular line surveys are among the main tools to probe the structure and physical conditions in protoplanetary disks (PPDs), the birthplace of planets. The large radial and vertical temperature as well as density gradients in these PPDs lead to a complex chemical composition, making chemistry an important step to understand the variety of planetary systems. Aims. We aimed to study the chemical content of the protoplanetary disk surrounding GG Tau A, a well-known triple T Tauri system. Methods. We used NOEMA with the new correlator PolyFix to observe rotational lines at ∼2.6 to 4 mm from a few dozen molecules. We analysed the data with a radiative transfer code to derive molecular densities and the abundance relative to 13CO, which we compare to those of the TMC1 cloud and LkCa 15 disk. Results. We report the first detection of CCS in PPDs. We also marginally detect OCS and find 16 other molecules in the GG Tauri outer disk. Ten of them had been found previously, while seven others (13CN, N2H+, HNC, DNC, HC3N, CCS, and C34S) are new detections in this disk. Conclusions. The analysis confirms that sulphur chemistry is not yet properly understood. The D/H ratio, derived from DCO+/HCO+, DCN/HCN, and DNC/HNC ratios, points towards a low temperature chemistry. The detection of the rare species CCS confirms that GG Tau is a good laboratory to study the protoplanetary disk chemistry, thanks to its large disk size and mass.