Kavli Affiliate: Bruce Macintosh
| Summary:
Observations of debris disks provide a valuable window to investigate the formation and evolution of planetary systems. We present high-contrast JWST/NIRCam observations of CPD-72 2713, a 24 Myr-old star that belongs to the $β$ Pic moving group. We obtained the first scattered-light images of the disk in both F210M and F444W filters, revealing a nearly face-on orientation. Forward modeling yields disk radii of $rm 55.4^+3.0_-3.2,AU$ (F210M) and $rm 39.1^+4.6_ -2.6,AU$ (F444W), both significantly smaller than the thermal emission radii measured with ALMA and Herschel/PACS. This discrepancy suggests that scattered light traces the inner region of the disk while thermal emission probes the outer regions. Combining the stellar rotation period ($4.47pm0.67$ days) from TESS light curves and spectroscopic $vsin i_*$, we constrained the stellar inclination to $47^circ.2^+11.1_-7.7$ ($1σ$). The minimum star-disk mutual inclinations are $27^circ.6 _-8.2 ^+11.5 (1σ)$ from F210M data and $27^circ.3 _-10.9^ +12.5 (1σ)$ in F444W data. We find that the minimum star–disk mutual inclination exceeds $10^circ$ at the $95%$ credible level in both F210M and F444W, suggesting a misalignment between the scattered-light disk and the stellar equatorial plane. We note that variation among published disk inclination measurements and potential systematic uncertainties may affect this probability. With JWST high-contrast imaging, we rule out planets down to $0.3 rm M_J$ at $0.5^primeprime$ and beyond, disfavoring a planet as the driver of the star-disk misalignment.
| Search Query: arXiv Query: search_query=au:”Macintosh Bruce”&id_list=&start=0&max_results=10
Read More