Are Inner Disc Misalignments Common? ALMA Reveals an Isotropic Outer Disc Inclination Distribution for Young Dipper Stars

TL;DR

This study uses ALMA observations to show that the inclinations of protoplanetary discs around young dippers are isotropic, suggesting inner disc misalignments are common and the dipper phenomenon is not solely due to outer disc orientation.

Contribution

It provides the first uniform analysis of 24 dipper discs' inclinations, revealing an isotropic distribution and challenging the traditional edge-on disc explanation for dippers.

Findings

Dipper disc inclinations are isotropic from 0-75 degrees.

Occurrence rate declines above 75 degrees, likely due to observational bias.

Inner disc misalignments are common during the protoplanetary phase.

Abstract

Dippers are a common class of young variable star exhibiting day-long dimmings with depths of up to several tens of percent. A standard explanation is that dippers host nearly edge-on (70 deg) protoplanetary discs that allow close-in (< 1 au) dust lifted slightly out of the midplane to partially occult the star. The identification of a face-on dipper disc and growing evidence of inner disc misalignments brings this scenario into question. Thus we uniformly (re)derive the inclinations of 24 dipper discs resolved with (sub-)mm interferometry from ALMA. We find that dipper disc inclinations are consistent with an isotropic distribution over 0-75 deg, above which the occurrence rate declines (likely an observational selection effect due to optically thick disc midplanes blocking their host stars). These findings indicate that the dipper phenomenon is unrelated to the outer (>10 au) disc resolved by ALMA and that inner disc misalignments may be common during the protoplanetary phase. More than one mechanism may contribute to the dipper phenomenon, including accretion-driven warps and "broken" discs caused by inclined (sub-)stellar or planetary companions.