Protoplanetary Disks in the Orion OMC1 Region Imaged with ALMA

TL;DR

This study uses ALMA to observe protoplanetary disks in the Orion OMC1 region, detecting dust emission in a subset of young stars and analyzing disk mass distribution and gas content.

Contribution

First ALMA survey of protoplanetary disks in Orion OMC1, providing insights into disk mass and gas-to-dust ratios in a dense star-forming region.

Findings

Approximately 20% of proplyds show detectable dust emission.

Detected disks have masses >1.5 M_J, but no gas emission detected.

Gas-to-dust ratios may be lower than standard assumptions.

Abstract

We present ALMA observations of the Orion Nebula that cover the OMC1 outflow region. Our focus in this paper is on compact emission from protoplanetary disks. We mosaicked a field containing $\sim 600$ near-IR-identified young stars, around which we can search for sub-mm emission tracing dusty disks. Approximately 100 sources are known proplyds identified with HST. We detect continuum emission at 1 mm wavelengths towards $\sim 20\%$ of the proplyd sample, and $\sim 8\%$ of the larger sample of near-IR objects. The noise in our maps allows 4$\sigma$ detection of objects brighter than $\sim 1.5$ mJy, corresponding to protoplanetary disk masses larger than 1.5 M$_{\rm J}$ (using standard assumptions about dust opacities and gas-to-dust ratios). None of these disks are detected in contemporaneous CO(2-1) or C$^{18}$O(2-1) observations, suggesting that the gas-to-dust ratios may be substantially smaller than the canonical value of 100. Furthermore, since dust grains may already be sequestered in large bodies in ONC disks, the inferred masses of disk solids may be underestimated. Our results suggest that the distribution of disk masses in this region is compatible with the detection rate of massive planets around M dwarfs, which are the dominant stellar constituent in the ONC.