Evidence for Early Circumstellar Disk Evolution in NGC 2068/71

TL;DR

This study investigates the evolution of circumstellar disks and accretion activity in young stars within NGC 2068/71, revealing significant disk evolution and accretion decline at an age of around 2 million years.

Contribution

It provides new observational evidence of early disk evolution and accretion decline in young stellar clusters using multi-wavelength spectroscopy and infrared photometry.

Findings

79% of members have infrared excess indicating disks

Stars with infrared excess show active accretion

Presence of evolved disks with decreased accretion activity

Abstract

We study the disk and accretion properties of young stars in the NGC 2068 and NGC 2071 clusters. Using low-resolution optical spectra, we define a membership sample and determine an age for the region of ~2 Myr. Using high-resolution spectra of the H-alpha line we study the accretion activity of these likely members and also examine the disk properties of the likely members using IRAC and MIPS mid-infrared photometry. A substantial fraction (79%) of the 67 members have an infrared excess while all of the stars with significant infrared excess show evidence for active accretion. We find three populations of evolved disks (IRAC-weak, MIPS-weak and transition disks) all of which show decreased accretion activity in addition to the evidence for evolution in the dust disk.