The near-infrared degree of polarization in debris disks. Toward a self-consistent approach to model scattered light observations

TL;DR

This study uses near-infrared polarized light observations of debris disks to better understand dust particle properties and introduces a self-consistent modeling approach that accounts for unbound grains, improving interpretation of scattered light data.

Contribution

It presents a new method to model polarized light observations of debris disks, incorporating unbound grains and radiation pressure effects for more accurate dust property constraints.

Findings

Polarization peaks at up to 40% in observed disks.

Dust particles are highly refractive and absorbing.

Unbound grains significantly influence polarization with distance.

Abstract

Debris disks give us the unique opportunity to probe the properties of small $\mu$m-sized particles, allowing us to peer into the constituents of their parent bodies, young analogs of comets and asteroids of our solar system. In the past, studies of the total intensity phase function have proven powerful to constrain the main characteristics of the dust particles in debris disks. Nonetheless, there can remain some degeneracies in the modeling that can be alleviated when considering polarized intensity observations. We obtained new near-IR scattered light observations of four young debris disks which allow us to constrain the degree of linear polarization as a function of the scattering angle. All four debris disks are detected in polarized intensity, and three are also recovered in total intensity. We measured peak degree of polarization of $\lesssim 40$\% for all three disks. We find that the particles must consist of highly refractive and absorbing material. For HD129590, by measuring the polarization fraction beyond the birth ring, we constrain the width of the size distribution to be smaller and smaller, compatible with the effect of radiation pressure. We put these findings to the test and present a self-consistent approach to produce synthetic images, assuming different profiles for the radiation pressure strength, and accounting for the presence of unbound grains. We find the contribution of these grains to be especially critical to reproduce the increasing degree of polarization with stellocentric distances. Some of our results might seem difficult to reconcile with our understanding of cosmic dust but since similar results have been obtained for other disks, we discuss the current limitation of available light scattering models as well as possible avenues to alleviate these unfortunate limitations.