The Statistics of Extended Debris Disks Measured with Gaia and Planck

TL;DR

This paper introduces a likelihood-based method combining Gaia and Planck data to statistically analyze debris disks around stars, revealing that about 10% of nearby dim stars have debris disks and identifying 80 new candidates.

Contribution

It presents a novel statistical approach to detect and characterize debris disks using Planck and Gaia data, enabling analysis of unresolved disks across thousands of stars.

Findings

Approximately 10% of nearby K and M-dwarfs have debris disks.

Identified 80 new candidate debris disks.

Demonstrated the potential of future CMB surveys to study planetary system outskirts.

Abstract

Thermal emission from debris disks around stars has been measured using targeted and resolved observations. We present an alternative, likelihood-based approach in which temperature maps from the Planck CMB survey at 857 and 545 GHz are analyzed in conjunction with stellar positions from Gaia to estimate the fraction of stars hosting disks and the thermal emission from the disks. The debris disks are not resolved (or even necessarily detected individually) but their statistical properties and the correlations with stellar properties are measured for several thousand stars. We compare our findings with higher sensitivity surveys of smaller samples of stars. For dimmer stars, in particular K and M-dwarfs, we find about 10 percent of stars within 80 pc have emission consistent with debris disks. We also report on 80 candidate disks, the majority of which are not previously identified. We have previously constrained the properties of Exo-Oort clouds using Planck data -- with future CMB surveys both components can be measured for different stellar types, providing a new avenue to study the outer parts of planetary systems.