GW Ori is a hierarchical triple system with a rare circumtriple disk. We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of 1.3 mm dust continuum and 12CO J = 2 − 1 molecular gas emission of the disk. For the first time, we identify three dust rings in the GW Ori disk at ∼46, 188, and 338 au, with estimated dust mass of 74, 168, and 245 Earth masses, respectively. To our knowledge, its outermost ring is the largest dust ring ever found in protoplanetary disks. We use visibility modeling of dust continuum to show that the disk has misaligned parts, and the innermost dust ring is eccentric. The disk misalignment is also suggested by the CO kinematics. We interpret these substructures as evidence of ongoing dynamical interactions between the triple stars and the circumtriple disk.
Dust gaps and rings appear ubiquitous in bright protoplanetary disks. Disk–planet interaction with dust trapping at the edges of planet-induced gaps is one plausible explanation. However, the sharpness of some observed dust rings indicate that sub-millimeter-sized dust grains have settled to a thin layer in some systems. We test whether or not such dust around gas gaps opened by planets can remain settled by performing three-dimensional, dust-plus-gas simulations of protoplanetary disks with an embedded planet. We find planets massive enough to open gas gaps stir small, sub-millimeter-sized dust grains to high disk elevations at the gap edges, where the dust scale height can reach ∼70% of the gas scale height. We attribute this dust “puff up” to the planet-induced meridional gas flows previously identified by Fung & Chiang and others. We thus emphasize the importance of explicit 3D simulations to obtain the vertical distribution of sub-millimeter-sized grains around gas gaps opened by massive planets. We caution that the gas-gap-opening planet interpretation of well-defined dust rings is only self-consistent with large grains exceeding millimeter size.
GW Ori is a hierarchical triple star system with a misaligned circumtriple protoplanetary disc. Recent ALMA observations have identified three dust rings with a prominent gap at $100\, \rm au$ and misalignments between each of the rings. A break in the gas disc may be driven either by the torque from the triple star system or a planet that is massive enough to carve a gap in the disc. Once the disc is broken, the rings nodally precess on different timescales and become misaligned. We investigate the origins of the dust rings by means of N–body integrations and 3-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations. We find that for observationally-motivated parameters of protoplanetary discs, the disc does not break due to the torque from the star system. We suggest that the presence of a massive planet (or planets) in the disc separates the inner and outer disc. We conclude that the disc breaking in GW Ori is likely caused by undetected planets — the first planet(s) in a circumtriple orbit.
The role of radiation pressure in dust migration and the opening of inner cavities in transitional disks is revisited in this paper. Dust dynamics including radiation pressure is often studied in axisymmetric models, but in this work, we show that highly non-axisymmetric features can arise from an instability at the inner disk edge. Dust grains clump into high density features there, allowing radiation to leak around them and penetrate deeper into the disk, changing the course of dust migration. Our proof-of-concept, two-dimensional, vertically averaged simulations show that the combination of radiation pressure, shadowing, and gas drag can produce a net outward migration, or recession, of the dust component of the disk. The recession speed of the inner disk edge is on the order of 10−5 times Keplerian speed in our parameter space, which is faster than the background viscous flow, assuming a Shakura–Sunyaev viscosity α ≲ 10−3. This speed, if sustained over the lifetime of the disk, can result in a dust cavity as large as tens of astronomical units.
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