On Kinematic Measurements of Self-Gravity in Protoplanetary Disks

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Main Authors: Andrews, Sean M., Teague, Richard, Wirth, Christopher P., Huang, Jane, Zhu, Zhaohuan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Andrews, Sean M.
Teague, Richard
Wirth, Christopher P.
Huang, Jane
Zhu, Zhaohuan
author_facet Andrews, Sean M.
Teague, Richard
Wirth, Christopher P.
Huang, Jane
Zhu, Zhaohuan
contents Using controlled injection and recovery experiments, we devised an analysis prescription to assess the quality of dynamical measurements of protoplanetary disk gas masses based on resolved (CO) spectral line data, given observational limitations (resolution, sampling, noise), measurement bias, and ambiguities in the geometry and physical conditions. With sufficient data quality, this approach performed well for massive disks ($M_{\rm d}/M_\ast=0.1$): we inferred $M_{\rm d}$ posteriors that recovered the true values with little bias ($\lesssim$ 20%) and uncertainties within a factor of two (2$σ$). The gas surface density profiles for such cases are recovered with remarkable fidelity. Some experimentation indicates that this approach becomes insensitive when $M_{\rm d}/M_\ast\lesssim5$%, due primarily to degeneracies in the surface density profile parameters. Including multiple lines that probe different vertical layers, along with some improvements in the associated tools, might push that practical boundary down by another factor of $\sim$two in ideal scenarios. We also demonstrated this analysis approach using archival ALMA observations of the MWC 480 disk (Öberg et al. 2021): we measured $M_{\rm d}=0.13^{\: +0.04}_{\: -0.01} \: M_\odot$ (corresponding to $M_{\rm d}/M_\ast=7\pm1$%) and identified kinematic substructures consistent with surface density gaps around 65 and 135 au. Overall, this (and similar work) suggests that these dynamical measurements offer powerful new constraints with sufficient accuracy and precision to quantify gas masses and surface densities at the high end of the $M_{\rm d}/M_\ast$ distribution, and therefore can serve as key benchmarks for detailed thermo-chemical modeling. We address some prospects for improvements, and discuss various caveats and limitations to guide future work.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_19574
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On Kinematic Measurements of Self-Gravity in Protoplanetary Disks
Andrews, Sean M.
Teague, Richard
Wirth, Christopher P.
Huang, Jane
Zhu, Zhaohuan
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Using controlled injection and recovery experiments, we devised an analysis prescription to assess the quality of dynamical measurements of protoplanetary disk gas masses based on resolved (CO) spectral line data, given observational limitations (resolution, sampling, noise), measurement bias, and ambiguities in the geometry and physical conditions. With sufficient data quality, this approach performed well for massive disks ($M_{\rm d}/M_\ast=0.1$): we inferred $M_{\rm d}$ posteriors that recovered the true values with little bias ($\lesssim$ 20%) and uncertainties within a factor of two (2$σ$). The gas surface density profiles for such cases are recovered with remarkable fidelity. Some experimentation indicates that this approach becomes insensitive when $M_{\rm d}/M_\ast\lesssim5$%, due primarily to degeneracies in the surface density profile parameters. Including multiple lines that probe different vertical layers, along with some improvements in the associated tools, might push that practical boundary down by another factor of $\sim$two in ideal scenarios. We also demonstrated this analysis approach using archival ALMA observations of the MWC 480 disk (Öberg et al. 2021): we measured $M_{\rm d}=0.13^{\: +0.04}_{\: -0.01} \: M_\odot$ (corresponding to $M_{\rm d}/M_\ast=7\pm1$%) and identified kinematic substructures consistent with surface density gaps around 65 and 135 au. Overall, this (and similar work) suggests that these dynamical measurements offer powerful new constraints with sufficient accuracy and precision to quantify gas masses and surface densities at the high end of the $M_{\rm d}/M_\ast$ distribution, and therefore can serve as key benchmarks for detailed thermo-chemical modeling. We address some prospects for improvements, and discuss various caveats and limitations to guide future work.
title On Kinematic Measurements of Self-Gravity in Protoplanetary Disks
topic Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.19574