The Disk Population of the Upper Scorpius Association

TL;DR

This study uses infrared data from Spitzer and WISE to analyze circumstellar disks in the 11-million-year-old Upper Scorpius association, revealing disk evolution patterns across different stellar masses.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive infrared survey of all known members, identifying new disk candidates and analyzing disk lifetimes across stellar types in Upper Scorpius.

Findings

<10% of B-G stars have primordial disks

Disk lifetime increases with decreasing stellar mass

Inner disk clearing occurs on similar timescales in different regions

Abstract

We present photometry at 3-24um for all known members of the Upper Scorpius association (~11 Myr) based on all images of these objects obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. We have used these data to identify the members that exhibit excess emission from circumstellar disks and estimate the evolutionary stages of these disks. Through this analysis, we have found ~50 new candidates for transitional, evolved, and debris disks. The fraction of members harboring inner primordial disks is <10% for B--G stars (M>1.2 Msun) and increases with later types to a value of ~25% at >=M5 (M<=0.2 Msun), in agreement with the results of previous disk surveys of smaller samples of Upper Sco members. These data indicate that the lifetimes of disks are longer at lower stellar masses, and that a significant fraction of disks of low-mass stars survive for at least ~10 Myr. Finally, we demonstrate that the distribution of excess sizes in Upper Sco and the much younger Taurus star-forming region (~1 Myr) are consistent with the same, brief timescale for clearing of inner disks.