Identification of new transitional disk candidates in Lupus with Herschel

TL;DR

This study uses Herschel Space Observatory data to identify and analyze transitional disk candidates in the Lupus star-forming region, revealing new candidates and differences in outer disk properties compared to typical T Tauri stars.

Contribution

It provides new transitional disk candidates in Lupus using Herschel data and demonstrates Herschel's effectiveness in complementing mid-infrared surveys.

Findings

Detected 34 disks in Herschel bands from 123 Lupus members.

Identified 5 transitional disk candidates, 3 of which are new.

Transitional disks show higher PACS-70 μm fluxes than normal T Tauri stars.

Abstract

New data from the Herschel Space Observatory are broadening our understanding of the physics and evolution of the outer regions of protoplanetary disks in star forming regions. In particular they prove to be useful to identify transitional disk candidates. The goals of this work are to complement the detections of disks and the identification of transitional disk candidates in the Lupus clouds with data from the Herschel Gould Belt Survey. We extracted photometry at 70, 100, 160, 250, 350 and 500 $\mu$m of all spectroscopically confirmed Class II members previously identified in the Lupus regions and analyzed their updated spectral energy distributions. We have detected 34 young disks in Lupus in at least one Herschel band, from an initial sample of 123 known members in the observed fields. Using the criteria defined in Ribas et al. (2013) we have identified five transitional disk candidates in the region. Three of them are new to the literature. Their PACS-70 $\mu$m fluxes are systematically higher than those of normal T Tauri stars in the same associations, as already found in T Cha and in the transitional disks in the Chamaeleon molecular cloud. Herschel efficiently complements mid-infrared surveys for identifying transitional disk candidates and confirms that these objects seem to have substantially different outer disks than the T Tauri stars in the same molecular clouds.