The Diversity of Intermediate-age Transitional Disks

Details The Diversity of Intermediate-age Transitional Disks The Diversity of Intermediate-age Transitional Disks

Mar 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008sptz.prop50485h&link_type=abstract

Spitzer Proposal ID #50485

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The details of how disk material evolves from an initially well-mixed distribution of gas and dust to a system composed mostly of large solids and gas giants like our own solar system is not well understood and is a fundamental question in astronomy. Theory suggests that as time passes grains in the disk collide and stick and then settle towards the dense disk midplane, eventually growing in size and forming planets and that this process is fastest in the inner, planet-forming regions of the disk. In the past few years the Spitzer IRS instrument has greatly aided in studying these regions of the disk by giving us extraordinary coverage in the mid-infrared. Some of the most notable observations with Spitzer have been of stars with optically-thick outer disks but inner disks which have undergone significant clearing and have inner disk holes that are mostly devoid of dust i.e. the ``transitional disks.'' Despite this revolutionary progress, however, the time scales of disk dissipation are not well-constrained. This is because previous Spitzer studies of transitional disks have focused on young 1-2 Myr old star-forming clouds. As such, we lack a coherent study of disk dissipation in older disks, hindering our ability to study how disk clearing correlates with age. Here we propose to obtain low-resolution IRS spectra of transitional disks in star-forming regions in the neglected time range of 3-20 Myr. This proposed study will give us a complete survey of transitional disks around stars up to 20 Myr and will set the stage for future observations with ALMA and JWST.

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