The Anatomy of an Unusual Edge-on Protoplanetary Disk. II. Gas temperature and a warm outer region
Christian Flores, Gaspard Duchene, Schuyler Wolff, Marion Villenave,, Karl Stapelfeldt, Jonathan P. Williams, Christophe Pinte, Deborah Padgett,, Michael S. Connelley, Gerrit van der Plas, Francois Menard, Marshall D., Perrin

TL;DR
This study uses high-resolution ALMA observations and spectroscopy to analyze the gas temperature structure of an unusual edge-on protoplanetary disk, revealing a warm outer region influenced by interstellar UV radiation.
Contribution
It provides detailed temperature mapping of the disk using a modified Topographically Reconstructed Distribution method, highlighting the impact of external UV heating on disk structure.
Findings
Gas disk extends twice as far as continuum emission.
Midplane temperature increases beyond 200 au due to UV heating.
CO emission is detected in two surface layers separated by a cold midplane.
Abstract
We present high-resolution CO and CO 2-1 ALMA observations, as well as optical and near-infrared spectroscopy, of the highly-inclined protoplanetary disk around SSTC2D J163131.2-242627. The spectral type we derive for the source is consistent with a star inferred from the ALMA observations. Despite its massive circumstellar disk, we find little to no evidence for ongoing accretion on the star. The CO maps reveal a disk that is unusually compact along the vertical direction, consistent with its appearance in scattered light images. The gas disk extends about twice as far away as both the submillimeter continuum and the optical scattered light. CO is detected from two surface layers separated by a midplane region in which CO emission is suppressed, as expected from freeze-out in the cold midplane. We apply a modified version of the Topographically…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
