An evla and carma study of dusty disks and torii with large grains in dying stars

TL;DR

This study uses multiwavelength radio observations to confirm the presence of large dust grains in dusty disks around dying stars, revealing differences in grain sizes between post-AGB objects and pre-planetary nebulae.

Contribution

First multiwavelength radio survey confirming large dust grains in disks around post-AGB stars, with implications for dust grain growth in late stellar evolution stages.

Findings

Detection of large grains in IRAS 22036+5306 and RV Tau.

Large grains have a power-law emissivity with beta=1-1.3.

Grains in post-AGB disks are likely larger than in pre-planetary nebulae.

Abstract

We report the results of a pilot multiwavelength survey in the radio continuum (X, Ka and Q bands, i.e., from 3.6 cm to 7 mm) carried out with the EVLA in order to confirm the presence of very large dust grains in dusty disks and torii around the central stars in a small sample of post-AGB objects, as inferred from millimeter and sub-millimeter observations. Supporting mm-wave observations were also obtained with CARMA towards three of our sources. Our EVLA survey has resulted in a robust detection of our most prominent submm emission source, the pre-planetary nebula IRAS 22036+5306, in all three bands, and the disk-prominent post-AGB object, RV Tau, in one band. The observed fluxes are consistent with optically-thin free-free emission, and since they are insignificant compared to their submm/mm fluxes, we conclude that the latter must come from substantial masses of cool, large (mm-sized) grains. We find that the power-law emissivity in the cm-to-submm range for the large grains in IRAS22036 is nu^{beta}, with beta=1-1.3. Furthermore, the value of beta in the 3 to 0.85 mm range for the three disk-prominent post-AGB sources (beta < or = 0.4) is significantly lower than that of IRAS22036, suggesting that the grains in post-AGB objects with circumbinary disks are likely larger than those in the dusty waists of pre-planetary nebulae.