Mass determination of protoplanetary disks from dust evolution

TL;DR

This paper investigates the use of dust line locations in protoplanetary disks as a method to estimate their mass, analyzing the reliability and limitations of this approach with models and high-resolution observations.

Contribution

It introduces a dust evolution model to test the dust line method for disk mass estimation, especially considering complex disk structures and dust traps.

Findings

Dust line location can estimate disk mass in simple disks.

Method is unreliable in disks with strong dust traps.

Identifies conditions where dust evolution dominates over trapping.

Abstract

The mass of protoplanetary disks is arguably one of their most important quantities shaping their evolution toward planetary systems, but it remains a challenge to determine this quantity. Using the high spatial resolution now available on telescopes such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), recent studies derived a relation between the disk surface density and the location of the "dust lines". This is a new concept in the field, linking the disk size at different continuum wavelengths with the radial distribution of grain populations of different sizes. We aim to use a dust evolution model to test the dependence of the dust line location on disk gas mass. In particular, we are interested in the reliability of the method for disks showing radial substructures, as recent high-resolution observations revealed. Our models show that the determination of the dust line location is a promising approach to the mass estimate of protoplanetay disks, but the exact relation between the dust line location and disk mass depends on the structure of the particular disk. We calibrated the relation for disks without evidence of radial structures, while for more complex structures we ran a simple dust evolution model. However, this method fails when there is evidence of strong dust traps. It is possible to reveal when dust evolution is dominated by traps, providing the necessary information for when the method should be applied with caution.