Spitzer observations of the Hyades: Circumstellar debris disks at 625 Myr of age

TL;DR

This study uses Spitzer data to investigate the presence of debris disks around Hyades cluster stars at 625 million years, finding no disks around FGK stars and limited disks around A-type stars, thus informing debris disk evolution.

Contribution

First comprehensive infrared survey of Hyades stars at 625 Myr, providing statistical constraints on debris disk incidence and properties at this age.

Findings

No debris disks detected around FGK stars.

Two A-type stars show debris disk evidence.

Constraints on maximum undetected dust mass around stars.

Abstract

We use the Spitzer Space Telescope to search for infrared excess at 24, 70, and 160 micron due to debris disks around a sample of 45 FGK-type members of the Hyades cluster. We supplement our observations with archival 24 and 70 micron Spitzer data of an additional 22 FGK-type and 11 A-type Hyades members in order to provide robust statistics on the incidence of debris disks at 625 Myr of age an era corresponding to the late heavy bombardment in the Solar System. We find that none of the 67 FGK-type stars in our sample show evidence for a debris disk, while 2 out of the 11 A-type stars do so. This difference in debris disk detection rate is likely to be due to a sensitivity bias in favor of early-type stars. The fractional disk luminosity, L_dust/L*, of the disks around the two A-type stars is ~4.0E-5, a level that is below the sensitivity of our observations toward the FGK-type stars. However, our sensitivity limits for FGK-type stars are able to exclude, at the 2-sigma level, frequencies higher than 12% and 5% of disks with L_dust/L* > 1.0E-4 and L_dust/L* > 5.0E-4, respectively. We also use our sensitivity limits and debris disk models to constrain the maximum mass of dust, as a function of distance from the stars, that could remain undetected around our targets.