A Self-Consistent Model of the Circumstellar Debris Created by a Giant Hypervelocity Impact in the HD172555 System

TL;DR

This paper models the debris disk around HD 172555 as resulting from a giant hypervelocity impact, explaining the stable infrared excess despite rapid dust removal by radiation pressure.

Contribution

It presents a self-consistent model linking impact-generated debris with observed spectral features and dust stability in HD 172555.

Findings

Infrared excess is consistent with impact-created debris disk at 6 AU.

Radiation pressure should clear submicron dust in less than a year.

Solid SiO emission is a plausible explanation for the 8 um spectral feature.

Abstract

Spectral modeling of the large infrared excess in the Spitzer IRS spectra of HD 172555 suggests that there is more than 10^19 kg of sub-micron dust in the system. Using physical arguments and constraints from observations, we rule out the possibility of the infrared excess being created by a magma ocean planet or a circumplanetary disk or torus. We show that the infrared excess is consistent with a circumstellar debris disk or torus, located at approximately 6 AU, that was created by a planetary scale hypervelocity impact. We find that radiation pressure should remove submicron dust from the debris disk in less than one year. However, the system's mid-infrared photometric flux, dominated by submicron grains, has been stable within 4 percent over the last 27 years, from IRAS (1983) to WISE (2010). Our new spectral modeling work and calculations of the radiation pressure on fine dust in HD 172555 provide a self-consistent explanation for this apparent contradiction. We also explore the unconfirmed claim that 10^47 molecules of SiO vapor are needed to explain an emission feature at 8 um in the Spitzer IRS spectrum of HD 172555. We find that unless there are 10^48 atoms or 0.05 Earth masses of atomic Si and O vapor in the system, SiO vapor should be destroyed by photo-dissociation in less than 0.2 years. We argue that a second plausible explanation for the 8 um feature can be emission from solid SiO, which naturally occurs in submicron silicate "smokes" created by quickly condensing vaporized silicate.