A Comprehensive Census of Nearby Infrared Excess Stars

TL;DR

This paper compiles the most extensive catalog of nearby infrared excess stars, combining literature data and new findings from Tycho-2 and AllWISE, to identify stars with circumstellar dust for future observational studies.

Contribution

It provides the largest curated catalog of infrared excess stars to date, including new discoveries, and analyzes their stellar and disk properties.

Findings

Nearly 500 'Prime' infrared excess stars identified.

Over 1200 'Reserved' stars with potential excess.

Extensive analysis of stellar and disk parameter relationships.

Abstract

The conclusion of the WISE mission presents an opportune time to summarize the history of using excess emission in the infrared as a tracer of circumstellar material and exploit all available data for future missions such as JWST. We have compiled a catalog of infrared excess stars from peer-reviewed articles and perform an extensive search for new infrared excess stars by cross-correlating the Tycho-2 and AllWISE catalogs. We define a significance of excess in four spectral type divisions and select stars showing greater than either 3$\sigma$ or 5$\sigma$ significance of excess in the mid- and far-infrared. Through procedures including SED fitting and various image analyses, each potential excess source was rigorously vetted to eliminate false-positives. The infrared excess stars from the literature and the new stars found through the Tycho-2 and AllWISE cross-correlation produced nearly 500 `Prime' infrared excess stars and $\geq$1200 `Reserved' stars. The main catalog of infrared excess stars are nearby, bright, and either demonstrate excess in more than one passband or have infrared spectroscopy confirming the infrared excess. This study identifies stars that display a spectral energy distribution suggestive of a secondary or post-protoplanetary generation of dust and they are ideal targets for future optical and infrared imaging observations. The final catalogs of stars summarizes the past work using infrared excess to detect dust disks and with the most extensive compilation of infrared excess stars ($\sim$ 1750) to date, we investigate various relationships among stellar and disk parameters.