English

Mass, Gas, and Gauss around a T Tauri Star with SPIRou

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2025-05-16 v1 Earth and Planetary Astrophysics

Abstract

Studies of young planets help us understand planet evolution and investigate important evolutionary processes such as atmospheric escape. We monitored IRAS 04125+2902, a 3 Myr-old T Tauri star with a transiting planet and a transitional disk, with the SPIRou infrared spectropolarimeter on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Using these data, we constrained the mass and density of the Jupiter-size companion to <0.16 M_J and <0.23 g/cm^3, respectively (90\% upper limits). These rule out a Jovian-like object and support the hypothesis that it is an ancestor to the numerous sub-Neptunes found around mature stars. We unambiguously detect magnetic fields at the stellar surface, small-scale fields reaching 1.5 kG and the large-scale field mostly consisting of a 0.80-0.95 kG dipole inclined by 5-15deg to the rotation axis. Accretion onto the star is low and/or episodic at a maximum rate of ~10^{-11} Msun/yr, indicating that IRAS 04125+2902 is most likely in a magnetic 'propeller' regime, possibly maintaining the star's slow rotation (11.3~d). We discover persistent Doppler-shifted absorption in a metastable He I line, clear evidence for a magnetized wind from a gaseous inner disk. Variability in absorption suggests structure in the disk wind that could reflect disk-planet interactions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.10564,
  title  = {Mass, Gas, and Gauss around a T Tauri Star with SPIRou},
  author = {J. -F. Donati and E. Gaidos and C. Moutou and P. I. Cristofari and L. Arnold and M. G. Barber and A. W. Mann},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.10564},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

A&A Letter in press (5 pages + 5 pages appendix, 11 figures, 4 tables)