The Differential Rotation of FU Ori

TL;DR

This study confirms that FU Ori's protoplanetary disk exhibits differential rotation extending to about 5 microns, supporting the accretion disk model and indicating a large outer radius of the active region.

Contribution

It provides observational evidence of differential rotation in FU Ori's disk at longer wavelengths, validating previous models and challenging thermal instability explanations.

Findings

Differential rotation observed up to ~5 microns.

Outer radius of accreting region estimated at ~1 AU.

Supports the accretion disk model over thermal instability theories.

Abstract

The emission of FU Orionis objects in outburst has been identified as arising in rapidly accreting protoplanetary disks, based on a number of observational properties. A fundamental test of the accretion disk scenario is that the differentially rotating disk spectrum should produce a variation of rotational velocity with the wavelength of observation, as spectra taken at longer wavelengths probe outer, more slowly rotating disk regions. Previous observations of FU Ori have shown smaller rotation at near-infrared (~ 2.2 micron) wavelengths than observed at optical (~ 0.6 micron) wavelengths consistent with the assumption of Keplerian rotation. Here we report a spectrum from the Phoenix instrument on Gemini South which shows that differential (slower) rotation continues to be observed out to ~ 5 micron. The observed spectrum is well matched by the prediction of our accretion disk model previously constructed to match the observed spectral energy distribution and the differential rotation at wavelengths < 2.2 micron. This kinematic result allows us to confirm our previous inference of a large outer radius (~ 1 AU) for the rapidly accreting region of the FU Ori disk, which presents difficulties for outburst models relying purely on thermal instability. While some optical spectra have been interpreted to pose problems for the disk interpretation of FU Ori, we show that the adjustment of the maximum effective temperature of the disk model, proposed in a previous paper, greatly reduces these difficulties.