Gravitational forces are expected to excite spiral density waves in protoplanetary disks, disks of gas and dust orbiting young stars. However, previous observations that showed spiral structure were not able to probe disk midplanes, where most of the mass is concentrated and where planet formation takes place. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array we detected a pair of trailing symmetric spiral arms in the protoplanetary disk surrounding the young star Elias 2-27. The arms extend to the disk outer regions and can be traced down to the midplane. These millimeter-wave observations also reveal an emission gap closer to the star than the spiral arms. We argue that the observed spirals trace shocks of spiral density waves in the midplane of this young disk.
@article{arxiv.1610.05139,
title = {Spiral Density Waves in a Young Protoplanetary Disk},
author = {Laura M. Pérez and John M. Carpenter and Sean M. Andrews and Luca Ricci and Andrea Isella and Hendrik Linz and Anneila I. Sargent and David J. Wilner and Thomas Henning and Adam T. Deller and Claire J. Chandler and Cornelis P. Dullemond and Joseph Lazio and Karl M. Menten and Stuartt A. Corder and Shaye Storm and Leonardo Testi and Marco Tazzari and Woojin Kwon and Nuria Calvet and Jane S. Greaves and Robert J. Harris and Lee G. Mundy},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.05139},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
This is our own version of the manuscript, the definitive version was published in Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf8296) on September 30, 2016. Posted to the arxiv for non-commercial use