Gemini-LIGHTS: Herbig Ae/Be and Massive T Tauri Protoplanetary Disks Imaged with Gemini Planet Imager

Abstract

We present the complete sample of protoplanetary disks from the Gemini- Large Imaging with the Gemini Planet Imager Herbig/T Tauri Survey, which observed bright Herbig Ae/Be stars and T Tauri stars in near-infrared polarized light to search for signatures of disk evolution and ongoing planet formation. The 44 targets were chosen based on their near- and mid-infrared colors, with roughly equal numbers of transitional, pre-transitional, and full disks. Our approach explicitly did not favor well-known, “famous” disks or those observed by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, resulting in a less-biased sample suitable to probe the major stages of disk evolution during planet formation. Our optimized data reduction allowed polarized flux as low as 0.002% of the stellar light to be detected, and we report polarized scattered light around 80% of our targets. We detected point-like companions for 47% of the targets, including three brown dwarfs (two confirmed, one new), and a new super-Jupiter-mass candidate around V1295 Aql. We searched for correlations between the polarized flux and system parameters, finding a few clear trends: the presence of a companion drastically reduces the polarized flux levels, far-IR excess correlates with polarized flux for nonbinary systems, and systems hosting disks with ring structures have stellar masses <3 M⊙. Our sample also included four hot, dusty “FS CMa” systems, and we detected large-scale ( >100 au) scattered light around each, signs of extreme youth for these enigmatic systems. Science-ready images are publicly available through multiple distribution channels using a new FITS file standard that has been jointly developed with members of the Very Large Telescope Spectro-polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research team.

A kinematic excess in the annular gap and gas-depleted cavity in the disc around HD 169142

“…Near-IR polarised intensity images of HD 169142 show signatures of shadowing across the outer composite dust rings along the major axis (Quanz et al 2013;Pohl et al 2017;Bertrang et al 2018;Rich et al 2022). One explanation for such shadows is subdivision and misalignment of the disc.…”

Confirmation and Keplerian motion of the gap-carving protoplanet HD 169142 b

“…We do not resolve the inner wake, which is likely overlapping with the bright inner ring, although the 2011 𝐻-band Subaru/HiCIAO image of the system shows a tentative extended signal in the annular gap at the expected location of the inner spiral wake (towards North and North east; Momose et al 2015). We note a reduction in surface brightness of the outer ring towards PA ∼ -15 • -30 • (also seen in R', I', H and J-band irrespective of instrument, Momose et al 2015;Monnier et al 2017;Bertrang et al 2018;Tschudi & Schmid 2021;Rich et al 2022), which could be caused by shadowing from either the inner ring or the expected inner spiral wake. 2019), obtained considering the SED of the star presented in Wagner et al (2015).…”

Recent Progress in Finding Binary Systems with the B[e] Phenomenon

“…There is still a controversy about the evolutionary classification of all of them. In some studies they are considered pre-main-sequence Herbig Be stars (e.g., [75][76][77] to name a few recent ones), but there has not been an unambiguous conclusion as to their extreme youth. Neither of these objects belongs to a star-forming region or has a strong far-IR excess from distant CS dust radiation that is similar to those of true pre-main-sequence stars.…”