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Published February 2015 | Submitted + Published
Journal Article Open

The VLTI/PIONIER near-infrared interferometric survey of southern T Tauri stars I. First results

Abstract

Context. The properties of the inner disks of bright Herbig AeBe stars have been studied with near-infrared (NIR) interferometry and high resolution spectroscopy. The continuum (dust) and a few molecular gas species have been studied close to the central star; however, sensitivity problems limit direct information about the inner disks of the fainter T Tauri stars. Aims. Our aim is to measure some of the properties (inner radius, brightness profile, shape) of the inner regions of circumstellar disk surrounding southern T Tauri stars. Methods. We performed a survey with the VLTI/PIONIER recombiner instrument at H-band of 21 T Tauri stars. The baselines used ranged from 11 m to 129 m, corresponding to a maximum resolution of ~3 mas (~0.45 au at 150 pc). Results. Thirteen disks are resolved well and the visibility curves are fully sampled as a function of baseline in the range 45–130 m for these 13 objects. A simple qualitative examination of visibility profiles allows us to identify a rapid drop-off in the visibilities at short baselines(<10 Mλ) in 8 resolved disks. This is indicative of a significant contribution from an extended (R> 3 au, at 150 pc) contribution of light from the disk. We demonstrate that this component is compatible with scattered light, providing strong support to an earlier prediction. The amplitude of the drop-off and the amount of dust thermal emission changes from source to source suggesting that each disk is different. A by-product of the survey is the identification of a new milli-arcsec separation binary: WW Cha. Spectroscopic and interferometric data of AK Sco have also been fitted with a binary + disk model. Conclusions. The visibility data are reproduced well when thermal emission and scattering from dust are fully considered. The inner radii measured are consistent with the expected dust sublimation radii. The modelling of AK Sco suggests a likely coplanarity between the disk and the binary's orbital plane.

Additional Information

© 2015 ESO. Received 2 July 2014. Accepted 12 November 2014. Published online 22 January 2015. PIONIER is funded by the Université Joseph Fourier (UJF, Grenoble) through its Poles TUNES and SMING, the Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble, the "Agence Nationale pour la Recherche" with the programme ANR EXOZODI, and the Institut National des Science de l'Univers (INSU) via the "Programme National de Physique Stellaire" and "Programme National de Planétologie". The authors want to warmly thank all the people involved in the VLTI project. This work is based on observations made with the ESO telescopes. It made use of the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) and of the Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS). All calculations and graphics were performed with the open source software Yorick. We acknowledge funding from the European Commission's 7th framework programme (EC FP7) under grant agreement No. 284405 (DIANA) and contract PERG06-A-2009-256513 and also from Agence Nationale pour la Recherche (ANR) of France under contract ANR-2010-JCJC-0504-01. F.M., S.C. and M.S. acknowledge support from Millennium Science Initiative, Chilean Ministry of Economy: Nucleus P10-022-F. This research has made use of the Simbad database operated at the CDS, Strasbourg, France, and the Jean-Marie Mariotti Center ASPRO and LITpro services co-developed by CRAL, IPAG, and FIZEAU. We thank the anonymous referee for her/his suggestions for improvement.

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Published - aa24520-14.pdf

Submitted - 1412.1052v3.pdf

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Additional details

Created:
August 20, 2023
Modified:
October 20, 2023