ON THE NATURE OF THE TERTIARY COMPANION TO FW TAU: ALMA CO OBSERVATIONS AND SED MODELING

Journal Article · Sat Jun 20 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · Astrophysical Journal Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/2041-8205/806/2/L22· OSTI ID:22518956

Caceres, Claudio; Hardy, Adam; Schreiber, Matthias R.; Cánovas, Héctor ^[1]; Cieza, Lucas A. ^[2]; Williams, Jonathan P. ^[3]; Hales, Antonio ^[4]; Pinte, Christophe ^[5]; Ménard, Francois ^[6]; Wahhaj, Zahed ^[7]

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1. Instituto de Física y Astronomía, Universidad de Valparaíso, Av. Gran Bretaña 1111, 2360102 Valparaíso (Chile)
2. Núcleo de Astronomía, Universidad Diego Portales, Av. Ejército 441, Santiago (Chile)
3. Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822 (United States)
4. Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array, Joint ALMA Observatory, Alonso de Córdova 3107, Vitacura, 763-0355 Santiago (Chile)
5. Univ. Grenoble Alpes, IPAG, CNRS, F-38000 Grenoble (France)
6. UMI-FCA, CNRS/INSU, UMI 3386 (France)
7. European Southern Observatory, Av. Alonso de Córdova 3107, Vitacura, 19001 Santiago (Chile)

It is thought that planetary mass companions may form through gravitational disk instabilities or core accretion. Identifying such objects in the process of formation would provide the most direct test for the competing formation theories. One of the most promising candidates for a planetary mass object still in formation is the third object in the FW Tau system. We present here ALMA cycle 1 observations confirming the recently published 1.3 mm detection of a dust disk around this third object and present for the first time a clear detection of a single peak {sup 12}CO (2–1) line, providing direct evidence for the simultaneous existence of a gas disk. We perform radiative transfer modeling of the third object in FW Tau and find that current observations are consistent with either a brown dwarf embedded in an edge-on disk or a planet embedded in a low inclination disk, which is externally irradiated by the binary companion. Further observations with ALMA, aiming for high SNR detections of non-contaminated gas lines, are required to conclusively unveil the nature of the third object in FW Tau.

• OSTI ID: 22518956
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 806, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
ACCRETION DISKS
CARBON 12
CARBON MONOXIDE
DETECTION
INCLINATION
IRRADIATION
MASS
PLANETS
PROTOPLANETS
RADIANT HEAT TRANSFER
STARS