ALMA images of discs: are all gaps carved by planets? - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Année : 2015

ALMA images of discs: are all gaps carved by planets?

Résumé

Protoplanetary discs are now routinely observed and exoplanets, after the numerous indirect discoveries, are starting to be directly imaged. To better understand the planet formation process, the next step is the detection of forming planets or of signposts of young planets still in their disc, such as gaps. A spectacular example is the ALMA science verification image of HL Tau showing numerous gaps and rings in its disc. To study the observability of planet gaps, we ran 3D hydrodynamical simulations of a gas and dust disc containing a 5 M J gap-opening planet and characterised the spatial distribution of migrating, growing and fragmenting dust grains. We then computed the corresponding synthetic images for ALMA. For a value of the dust fragmentation threshold of 15 m s −1 for the collisional velocity, we identify for the first time a self-induced dust pile up in simulations taking fragmentation into account. This feature, in addition to the easily detected planet gap, causes a second apparent gap that could be mistaken for the signature of a second planet. It is therefore essential to be cautious in the interpretation of gap detections.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
mmgaps.pdf (416.09 Ko) Télécharger le fichier
Origine : Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s)
Loading...

Dates et versions

hal-01184228 , version 1 (13-08-2015)

Identifiants

Citer

Jean-François Gonzalez, Guillaume Laibe, Sarah T. Maddison, Christophe Pinte, François Ménard. ALMA images of discs: are all gaps carved by planets?. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2015, 454, pp.L36. ⟨hal-01184228⟩
152 Consultations
87 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More