Does the structure of a protoplanetary disk depend on the mass of its host star?
The final outcome of the planet formation process depends on the properties of the protoplanetary disks planets form in. Some of these properties vary with stellar spectral type due to different stellar masses and luminosity, while others don't. Previous work had found indications that these disks become flatter towards lower stellar masses.
In this work, we investigate whether the disk structure varies with stellar mass from low-mass brown dwarfs to intermediate-mass Herbig Ae stars. Using radiative transfer models including vertical structure calculations with self-consistent dust settling, we constrain the strength of turbulent mixing from fitting a sample of SEDs for each stellar mass group. We find no significant variations in turbulent mixing strength, and develop a set of scaling relations that show the disk structure is independent of stellar mass when considering regions of similar temperature.
link: Mulders & Dominik 2012 (arXiv)
In this work, we investigate whether the disk structure varies with stellar mass from low-mass brown dwarfs to intermediate-mass Herbig Ae stars. Using radiative transfer models including vertical structure calculations with self-consistent dust settling, we constrain the strength of turbulent mixing from fitting a sample of SEDs for each stellar mass group. We find no significant variations in turbulent mixing strength, and develop a set of scaling relations that show the disk structure is independent of stellar mass when considering regions of similar temperature.
link: Mulders & Dominik 2012 (arXiv)
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