Constraining the properties of transitional disks in Chamaeleon I with Herschel

TL;DR

This study uses Herschel data to refine estimates of disk masses and gap sizes in transitional disks, revealing that far-infrared observations significantly improve parameter constraints and offer insights into disk structure.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates that incorporating Herschel photometry enhances the accuracy of disk property estimates in transitional disks compared to mid-infrared data alone.

Findings

Herschel data reduces uncertainties in disk mass and gap radius estimates.

Disk dust masses range from 2x10^-5 to 4x10^-4 Msun.

Weak evidence suggests different density profiles in transitional disks.

Abstract

Transitional disks are protoplanetary disks with opacity gaps/cavities in their dust distribution, a feature that may be linked to planet formation. We perform Bayesian modeling of the three transitional disks SZ Cha, CS Cha and T25 including photometry from the Herschel Space Observatory to quantify the improvements added by these new data. We find disk dust masses between 2x10^-5 and 4x10^-4 Msun, and gap radii in the range of 7-18 AU, with uncertainties of ~ one order of magnitude and ~ 4 AU, respectively. Our results show that adding Herschel data can significantly improve these estimates with respect to mid-infrared data alone, which have roughly twice as large uncertainties on both disk mass and gap radius. We also find weak evidence for different density profiles with respect to full disks. These results open exciting new possibilities to study the distribution of disk masses for large samples of disks.