English

A coplanar circumbinary protoplanetary disk in the TWA 3 triple M dwarf system

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2021-05-05 v2 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

We present sensitive ALMA observations of TWA 3, a nearby, young (\sim10 Myr) hierarchical system composed of three pre-main sequence M3--M4.5 stars. For the first time, we detected 12{}^{12}CO and 13{}^{13}CO JJ=2-1 emission from the circumbinary protoplanetary disk around TWA 3A. We jointly fit the protoplanetary disk velocity field, stellar astrometric positions, and stellar radial velocities to infer the architecture of the system. The Aa and Ab stars (0.29±0.01M0.29\pm0.01\,M_\odot and 0.24±0.01M0.24\pm0.01\,M_\odot, respectively) comprising the tight (P=35P=35 days) eccentric (e=0.63±0.01e=0.63\pm0.01) spectroscopic binary are coplanar with their circumbinary disk (misalignment <6< 6^{\circ} with 68% confidence), similar to other short-period binary systems. From models of the spectral energy distribution, we found the inner radius of the circumbinary disk (rinner=0.500.75r_\mathrm{inner} = 0.50 - 0.75 au) to be consistent with theoretical predictions of dynamical truncation rcav/ainner3r_\mathrm{cav}/a_\mathrm{inner} \approx 3. The outer orbit of the tertiary star B (0.40±0.28M0.40\pm0.28\,M_\odot, a65±18a\sim65 \pm 18 au, e=0.3±0.2e=0.3\pm0.2) is not as well constrained as the inner orbit, however, orbits coplanar with the A system are still preferred (misalignment <20 < 20^{\circ}). To better understand the influence of the B orbit on the TWA 3A circumbinary disk, we performed SPH simulations of the system and found that the outer edge of the gas disk (router=8.5±0.2r_\mathrm{outer}=8.5\pm0.2 au) is most consistent with truncation from a coplanar, circular or moderately eccentric orbit, supporting the preference from the joint orbital fit.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2102.11875,
  title  = {A coplanar circumbinary protoplanetary disk in the TWA 3 triple M dwarf system},
  author = {Ian Czekala and Álvaro Ribas and Nicolás Cuello and Eugene Chiang and Enrique Macías and Gaspard Duchêne and Sean M. Andrews and Catherine C. Espaillat},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.11875},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

19 pages, 9 figures, accepted to ApJ

R2 v1 2026-06-23T23:26:57.184Z