Chemical modeling of Orion Nebula Cluster disks: evidence for massive, compact gas disks with ISM-like gas-to-dust ratios

TL;DR

This study uses thermochemical modeling of ALMA observations to reveal that disks in the Orion Nebula Cluster are massive, compact, and have ISM-like gas-to-dust ratios, suggesting recent onset of external photoevaporation.

Contribution

It provides detailed modeling of 20 disks in the ONC, revealing their masses, sizes, and gas-to-dust ratios, and compares stellar and evolutionary model masses, expanding dynamical mass measurements.

Findings

Disks are compact with radii <100 AU.

Gas masses are ≥10^{-3} M_sun.

Gas-to-dust ratios are ≥100, similar to ISM.

Abstract

The stellar cluster environment is expected to play a central role in the evolution of circumstellar disks. We use thermochemical modeling to constrain the dust and gas masses, disk sizes, UV and X-ray radiation fields, viewing geometries, and central stellar masses of 20 Class II disks in the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC). We fit a large grid of disk models to $350$ GHz continuum, CO $J=3-2$, and HCO$^+$ $J=4-3$ ALMA observations of each target, and we introduce a procedure for modeling interferometric observations of gas disks detected in absorption against a bright molecular cloud background. We find that the ONC disks are massive and compact, with typical radii $<100$ AU, gas masses $\geq10^{-3}$ $M_{\odot}$, and gas-to-dust ratios $\geq100$. The ISM-like gas-to-dust ratios derived from our modeling suggest that compact, externally-irradiated disks in the ONC are less prone to gas-phase CO depletion than the massive and extended gas disks that are commonly found in nearby low-mass star-forming regions. The presence of massive gas disks indicates that external photoevaporation may have only recently begun operating in the ONC, though it remains unclear whether other cluster members are older and more evaporated than the ones in our sample. Finally, we compare our dynamically-derived stellar masses with the stellar masses predicted from evolutionary models and find excellent agreement. Our study has significantly increased the number of dynamical mass measurements in the mass range $\leq 0.5$ $M_{\odot}$, demonstrating that the ONC is an ideal region for obtaining large samples of dynamical mass measurements towards low-mass M-dwarfs.