Evolution of the dust/gas environment around Herbig Ae/Be stars

TL;DR

This study investigates the evolution of dust and gas environments around Herbig Ae/Be stars using CO observations, revealing how envelope and disk properties change with stellar age.

Contribution

It provides new observational data on CO emissions and circumstellar environment evolution around Herbig Ae/Be stars, highlighting age-related changes in envelope and disk characteristics.

Findings

Envelope mass decreases with stellar age.

Infrared excess diminishes as stars age.

Strong correlation between CO line intensity and envelope mass.

Abstract

With the KOSMA 3-m telescope, 54 Herbig Ae/Be stars were surveyed in CO and $^{13}$CO emission lines. The properties of the stars and their circumstellar environments are studied by fitting the SEDs. The mean line width of $^{13}$CO (2-1) lines of this sample is 1.87 km s$^{-1}$. The average column density of H$_{2}$ is found to be $4.9\times10^{21}$ cm$^{-2}$ for the stars younger than $10^{6}$ yr, while drops to $2.5\times10^{21}$ cm$^{-2}$ for those older than $10^{6}$ yr. No significant difference is found among the SEDs of Herbig Ae stars and Herbig Be stars at the same age. The infrared excess decreases with age. The envelope masses and the envelope accretion rates decease with age after $10^{5}$ yr. The average disk mass of the sample is $3.3\times10^{-2} M_{\sun}$. The disk accretion rate decreases more slowly than the envelope accretion rate. A strong correlation between the CO line intensity and the envelope mass is found.