English

Spiral Structure in the Gas Disk of TW Hya

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2019-11-06 v2

Abstract

We report the detection of spiral substructure in both the gas velocity and temperature structure of the disk around TW~Hya, suggestive of planet-disk interactions with an unseen planet. Perturbations from Keplerian rotation tracing out a spiral pattern are observed in the SE of the disk, while significant azimuthal perturbations in the gas temperature are seen in the outer disk, outside 90~au, extending the full azimuth of the disk. The deviation in velocity is either Δvϕ/vkep0.1\Delta v_{\phi} \, / \, v_{\rm kep} \sim 0.1 or Δvz/vkep0.01\Delta v_{z} \, / \, v_{\rm kep} \sim 0.01 depending on whether the perturbation is in the rotational or vertical direction, while radial perturbations can be ruled out. Deviations in the gas temperature are ±4\pm 4 K about the azimuthally averaged profile, equivalent to deviations of ΔTgas/Tgas0.05\Delta T_{\rm gas} \, / \, T_{\rm gas} \sim 0.05. Assuming all three structures can be described by an Archimedean spiral, measurements of the pitch angles of both velocity and temperature spirals show a radially decreasing trend for all three, ranging from 9^{\circ} at 70 au, dropping to 3^{\circ} at 200 au. Such low pitch-angled spirals are not readily explained through the wake of an embedded planet in the location of previously reported at 94 au, but rather require a launching mechanism which results in much more tightly wound spirals. Molecular emission tracing distinct heights in the disk is required to accurately distinguish between spiral launching mechanisms.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1910.01532,
  title  = {Spiral Structure in the Gas Disk of TW Hya},
  author = {Richard Teague and Jaehan Bae and Jane Huang and Edwin Bergin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1910.01532},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

Accepted to ApJL