An ALMA Survey of faint disks in the Chamaeleon I star-forming region: Why are some Class II disks so faint?

TL;DR

This study uses enhanced ALMA observations to investigate why some Class II disks in the Chamaeleon I region are faint, revealing that factors like stellar companions and photoevaporation influence disk evolution and mass.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive, high-sensitivity ALMA survey of faint disks in Chamaeleon I, confirming the stellar-disk mass relation and exploring causes of faintness.

Findings

94% detection rate of disks around stars earlier than M3

Faint disks often associated with close stellar companions or photoevaporation

Presence of disks around secondary stars in binaries explains some low-mass systems

Abstract

ALMA surveys of nearby star-forming regions have shown that the dust mass in the disk is correlated with the stellar mass, but with a large scatter. This scatter could indicate either different evolutionary paths of disks or different initial conditions within a single cluster. We present ALMA Cycle 3 follow-up observations for 14 Class II disks that were low S/N detections or non-detections in our Cycle 2 survey of the $\sim 2$ Myr-old Chamaeleon I star-forming region. With 5 times better sensitivity, we detect millimeter dust continuum emission from six more sources and increase the detection rate to 94\% (51/54) for Chamaeleon I disks around stars earlier than M3. The stellar-disk mass scaling relation reported in \citet{pascucci2016} is confirmed with these updated measurements. Faint outliers in the $F_{mm}$--$M_*$ plane include three non-detections (CHXR71, CHXR30A, and T54) with dust mass upper limits of 0.2 M$_\oplus$ and three very faint disks (CHXR20, ISO91, and T51) with dust masses $\sim 0.5$ M$_\oplus$. By investigating the SED morphology, accretion property and stellar multiplicity, we suggest for the three millimeter non-detections that tidal interaction by a close companion ($<$100 AU) and internal photoevaporation may play a role in hastening the overall disk evolution. The presence of a disk around only the secondary star in a binary system may explain the observed stellar SEDs and low disk masses for some systems.