English

Evidence of a Disk-wind Origin for Fluorescent H$_2$ in Classical T Tauri Stars

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2025-02-25 v1 Earth and Planetary Astrophysics Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

We use FUV spectra of 36 T Tauri stars, predominately from Hubble Space Telescope\textit{Hubble Space Telescope}'s ULLYSES program, to examine the kinematic properties of fluorescent H2_2 emission lines for evidence of disk outflows. Leveraging improvements to the HST\textit{HST}-COS wavelength solution, we co-add isolated lines within four fluorescent progressions ([v’\textit{v'},J’\textit{J'}] = [1,4], [1,7], [0,2], and [3,16]) to improve signal-to-noise, and we fit each co-added line profile with one or two Gaussian components. Of the high S/N line profiles (S/N \geq 12 at the peak of the profile), over half are best fit with a combination of a broad and narrow Gaussian component. For profiles of the [1,4] and [1,7] progressions, we find a systematic blue-shift of a few km s1^{-1} between the broad and narrow centroid velocities and stellar radial velocities. For the [0,2] progression, we find centroid velocities consistently blueshifted with respect to stellar radial velocities on the order of -5 km s1^{-1} for the single and narrow components, and -10 km s1^{-1} for the broad components. Overall, the blueshifts observed in our sample suggest that the molecular gas traces an outflow from a disk wind in some sources, and not solely disk gas in Keplerian rotation. The low-velocity systematic blue-shifts, and emitting radii as inferred from line FWHMs, observed in our sample are similar to those observed with optical [O I] surveys of T Tauri stars. We estimate H2_2 mass-loss rates of 109^{-9} to 1011^{-11} MM_{\odot} yr1^{-1}, but incomplete knowledge of wind parameters limits comparisons to global models.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.16749,
  title  = {Evidence of a Disk-wind Origin for Fluorescent H$_2$ in Classical T Tauri Stars},
  author = {Matt Kalscheur and Kevin France and Brunella Nisini and P. Christian Schneider and Richard Alexander and Jochen Eisloffel and Justyn Campbell-White and Hsien Shang and Manuele Gangi and Zhen Guo and Seok-Jun Chang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.16749},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

30 pages, 15 figures, accepted to $\textit{AJ}$