Light Echoes of Protoplanetary Disks

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that light echoes can be used to study the geometry and composition of protoplanetary disks around active stars, even when the disks are not spatially resolved, by fitting observed time delays to disk models.

Contribution

It introduces a method to analyze protoplanetary disks using light echoes and validates it with models based on active M dwarf stars.

Findings

Successful fitting of disk parameters using light echo data.

Potential for this method to identify and characterize protoplanetary disks.

Effective in cases with short cadence observational data.

Abstract

Light echoes offer a means of studying protoplanetary disks, including their geometry and composition, even when they are not spatially resolved. We present a test of this approach applied specifically to optically thick, geometrically flared disks around active stars. Here we adopt stellar parameters of an active M dwarf to calculate light echoes for disks and rings with radii that would produce time delays consistent with TESS short cadence (about 2 minutes) time bins. Our results show successful fits to disk parameters, highlighting the potential effectiveness of this method in the search for protoplanetary disks.