ALMA observations of polarization from dust scattering in the IM Lup protoplanetary disk

TL;DR

This study uses ALMA observations to analyze polarized dust emission in the IM Lup protoplanetary disk, supporting self-scattering models and revealing differences with HL Tau related to optical depth and dust grain sizes.

Contribution

First detailed polarization analysis of IM Lup's disk at 870 μm, confirming self-scattering as the polarization mechanism and comparing it with HL Tau to explore dust properties.

Findings

Polarization aligned with the disk's minor axis.

Polarization fraction peaks at ~1.1% toward the center.

IM Lup shows higher polarization fraction than HL Tau.

Abstract

We present 870 $\mu$m ALMA observations of polarized dust emission toward the Class II protoplanetary disk IM Lup. We find that the orientation of the polarized emission is along the minor axis of the disk, and that the value of the polarization fraction increases steadily toward the center of the disk, reaching a peak value of ~1.1%. All of these characteristics are consistent with models of self-scattering of submillimeter-wave emission from an optically thin inclined disk. The distribution of the polarization position angles across the disk reveals that while the average orientation is along the minor axis, the polarization orientations show a significant spread in angles; this can also be explained by models of pure scattering. We compare the polarization with that of the Class I/II source HL Tau. A comparison of cuts of the polarization fraction across the major and minor axes of both sources reveals that IM Lup has a substantially higher polarization fraction than HL Tau toward the center of the disk. This enhanced polarization fraction could be due a number of factors, including higher optical depth in HL Tau, or scattering by larger dust grains in the more evolved IM Lup disk. However, models yield similar maximum grain sizes for both HL Tau (72 $\mu$m) and IM Lup (61 $\mu$m, this work). This reveals continued tension between grain-size estimates from scattering models and from models of the dust emission spectrum, which find that the bulk of the (unpolarized) emission in disks is most likely due to millimeter (or even centimeter) sized grains.