Characterization of mid-infrared polarization due to scattering in protoplanetary disks

TL;DR

This study investigates mid-infrared polarization caused by scattering in protoplanetary disks, revealing how disk properties influence polarization patterns and aiding magnetic field observations.

Contribution

It characterizes the polarization due to scattering in protoplanetary disks, highlighting the dominance of thermal re-emission and the effects of disk parameters on polarization.

Findings

Thermal re-emission dominates over stellar scattering in disks with small inner holes.

Polarization degree varies with radial distance, disk flaring, and stellar luminosity.

Longer wavelengths show slower convergence of polarization degree.

Abstract

It is generally assumed that magnetic fields play an important role in the formation and evolution of protoplanetary disks. One way of observationally constraining magnetic fields is to measure polarized emission and absorption produced by magnetically aligned elongated dust grains. The fact that radiation also becomes linearly polarized by light scattering at optical to millimeter wavelengths complicates magnetic field studies. We characterize the linear polarization of mid-infrared radiation due to scattering of the stellar radiation and dust thermal re-emission radiation (self-scattering). We find that the thermal re-emission radiation is stronger than the scattered stellar radiation for disks with inner holes smaller than 10 au within the considered parameter range. The mid-infrared polarization due to scattering shows several clear trends: For scattered stellar radiation only, the linear polarization degree decreases slightly with increasing radial distance, while it increases with radial distance for thermal re-emission radiation only and for a combination of scattered stellar radiation and thermal re-emission radiation. The linear polarization degree decreases with increasing disk flaring and luminosity of the central star. An increasing inner radius shifts the increase of the linear polarization degree further outside, while a larger scale height increases the linear polarization degree for small radial distances and decreases this degree further outside. For longer wavelengths, the linear polarization degree converges more slowly.