Browsing by Author "Carpenter, J."

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    A gap in the planetesimal disc around HD 107146 and asymmetric warm dust emission revealed by ALMA
    (Oxford University Press, 2018) Marino, S.; Carpenter, J.; Wyatt, M.C.; Booth, M.; Casassus, S.; Faramaz, V.; Guzman, V.; Hughes, A.M.; Isella, A.; Kennedy, G.M.; Matrà, L.; Ricci, L.; Corder, S.
    While detecting low-mass exoplanets at tens of au is beyond current instrumentation, debris discs provide a unique opportunity to study the outer regions of planetary systems. Here, we report new ALMA observations of the 80–200 Myr old Solar analogue HD 107146 that reveal the radial structure of its exo-Kuiper belt at wavelengths of 1.1 and 0.86 mm. We find that the planetesimal disc is broad, extending from 40 to 140 au, and it is characterized by a circular gap extending from 60 to 100 au in which the continuum emission drops by about 50 per cent. We also report the non-detection of the CO J = 3–2 emission line, confirming that there is not enough gas to affect the dust distribution. To date, HD 107146 is the only gas-poor system showing multiple rings in the distribution of millimetre sized particles. These rings suggest a similar distribution of the planetesimals producing small dust grains that could be explained invoking the presence of one or more perturbing planets. Because the disc appears axisymmetric, such planets should be on circular orbits. By comparing N-body simulations with the observed visibilities we find that to explain the radial extent and depth of the gap, it would require the presence of multiple low-mass planets or a single planet that migrated through the disc. Interior to HD 107146’s exo-Kuiper belt we find extended emission with a peak at ∼20 au and consistent with the inner warm belt that was previously predicted based on 22 μμm excess as in many other systems. This warm belt is the first to be imaged, although unexpectedly suggesting that it is asymmetric. This could be due to a large belt eccentricity or due to clumpy structure produced by resonant trapping with an additional inner planet.
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    The Complex Morphology of the Young Disk MWC 758: Spirals and Dust Clumps around a Large Cavity
    (IOP Publishing, 2018) Boehler, Y.; Ricci, L.; Weaver, E.; Isella, A.; Benisty, M.; Carpenter, J.; Grady, C.; Shen, Bo-Ting; Tang, Ya-Wen; Perez, L.
    We present Atacama Large Millimeter Array observations at an angular resolution of 0farcs1–0farcs2 of the disk surrounding the young Herbig Ae star MWC 758. The data consist of images of the dust continuum emission recorded at 0.88 millimeter, as well as images of the 13CO and C18O J = 3–2 emission lines. The dust continuum emission is characterized by a large cavity of roughly 40 au in radius which might contain a mildly inner warped disk. The outer disk features two bright emission clumps at radii of ~47 and 82 au that present azimuthal extensions and form a double-ring structure. The comparison with radiative transfer models indicates that these two maxima of emission correspond to local increases in the dust surface density of about a factor 2.5 and 6.5 for the south and north clumps, respectively. The optically thick 13CO peak emission, which traces the temperature, and the dust continuum emission, which probes the disk midplane, additionally reveal two spirals previously detected in near-IR at the disk surface. The spirals seen in the dust continuum emission present, however, a slight shift of a few au toward larger radii and one of the spirals crosses the south dust clump. Finally, we present different scenarios to explain the complex structure of the disk.