High resolution imaging of the GG Tauri system at 267 GHz

Piétu, V.; Gueth, F.; Hily-Blant, Pierre; Schuster, K.; Pety, J.

doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201015682

Cited by 30 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…The CO gas appears inhomogeneous as a series of fragments and the structure is dominated by an east-west extension, contrary to the very low level (Signal-to-noise ratio of 2) northern feature seen in continuum reported by 15 . The IRAM image ( Fig.1 panels d,e,f and Extended Data: Fig.2) reveals, at lower angular resolution, that the CO J=2-1 emission peaks are located near the inner edge of the outer ring (at radius ∼ 100 − 150 au).…”

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confidence: 72%

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Possible planet formation in the young, low-mass, multiple stellar system GG Tau A

Dutrey

Folco

Guilloteau

et al. 2014

Nature

105

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Forming planets around binary stars may be more difficult than around single stars [1][2][3] . In a close binary star (< 100 au separation), theory predicts the presence of circumstellar discs around each star, and an outer circumbinary disc surrounding a gravitationally cleared inner cavity 4,5 . As the inner discs are depleted by accretion onto the stars on timescales of few 10 3 yr, replenishing material must be transferred from the outer reservoir in order to fuel 1 planet formation (which occurs on timescales of ∼1 Myr). Gas flowing through disc cavities has been detected in single star systems 6 . A circumbinary disc was discovered around the young low-mass binary system GGTau-A 7 , which has recently been proven to be a hierarchical triple system 8 . It has one large inner disc 9 around the southern single star and shows small amounts of shocked H 2 gas residing within the central cavity 10 , but other than a weak detection 11 , hitherto the distribution of cold gas in this cavity or in any other binary or multiple star system has never been determined. Here we report imaging of massive CO-emitting gas fragments within the GG Tau-A cavity. From the kinematics we conclude that the flow appears capable of sustaining the inner disc beyond the accretion lifetime, leaving time for planet formation to occur.The 1-5 Million year old 12, 13 triple stellar system GGTau-A is located at 140 pc in a hole of the Taurus molecular cloud. Its molecular emission is free of contamination 14 and there is no known outflow neither jet associated to the source. The main binary GGTau-A (Aa-Ab) and the close-binary GGTau-Ab (Ab1-Ab2) have an apparent separation of 35 au and 4.5 au, respectively 8 .The outer circumbinary Keplerian disc of gas and dust surrounding GGTau-A consists of a ring extending from radius r ∼ 190 to 280 au and an outer disc extending up to 800 au from the central stars with a total mass ∼ 0.15 M ⊙ 14 .Using the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA), we observed GGTau-A in the dust thermal emission at 0.45 mm and in CO J=6-5 line ( Fig.1: panels a,b,c) with an angular resolution θ ≃ 0.25 ′′ or ∼35 au. The continuum image shows cold dust emission from only one circumstellar 2 disc-like structure associated with GGTau-Aa 9, 15 . We estimate the minimum dust disc size to be ∼ 7 au while the minimum mass of gas and dust is roughly 10 −3 M ⊙ about Jupiter's mass. The complex CO J=6-5 spectral line shape at the location of GGTau-Aa also reveals the existence of a CO circumstellar disc of outer radius ∼ 20 au (Methods and Extended Data: Fig.2). We do not detect cold dust emission around GGTau-Ab even though the existence of inner dust disc(s) was reported from unresolved Infrared emission 16 . Our 0.45 mm upper limits (Methods) are compatible with tidal truncation which prevents any circumstellar disc to extend beyond about 2 au 8 .The ALMA CO J=6-5 image ( Fig.1 panels a,b,c and Extended Data: Fig.1 and Fig.2) also clearly resolves CO gas within the central cavity with a structure indicative of the streamer-like f...

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confidence: 72%

“…The continuum image shows cold dust emission from only one circumstellar disc-like structure associated with GGTau-Aa 9,15 . We estimate the minimum dust disc size to be ∼ 7 au while the minimum mass of gas and dust is roughly 10 −3 M ⊙ about Jupiter's mass.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Possible planet formation in the young, low-mass, multiple stellar system GG Tau A

Dutrey

Folco

Guilloteau

et al. 2014

Nature

105

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“…The composite flux densities, S ν , or upper limits for each of these components are compiled in Table 1 and displayed together in Figure 2 (note that the measurements for the GG Tau B and N components in this figure and table were determined from images that were corrected for the response of the primary beam). For completeness, we also include literature measurements of the radio spectra for each component in this figure. 17 It is worth pointing out that we do not detect the "streamer" identified by Piétu et al (2011); its estimated surface brightness is comparable to the rms noise level in our 1.3 mm map, and would likely lie well below the noise floor at longer wavelengths if its origin is thermal dust emission.…”

Section: Analysis and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 69%

“…GG Tau is the canonical example of a close young stellar pair (∼0. 25 projected separation; Leinert et al 1991;Ghez et al 1993) with a prominent circumbinary ring, which has been resolved and extensively studied in millimeterwave continuum and molecular line emission (Dutrey et al 1994;Guilloteau et al 1999;Piétu et al 2011) as well as scattered light in the optical and near-infrared (Roddier et al 1996;Silber et al 2000;Krist et al 2002Krist et al , 2005McCabe et al 2002;Itoh et al 2002;Duchêne et al 2004). The (unresolved) radio spectrum indicates that ∼millimeter/centimetersized particles are present in the GG Tau circumbinary ring (e.g., Guilloteau et al 1999;Rodmann et al 2006;Scaife 2013), lending some additional support to the idea that radial drift is halted near the ring edge.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

RESOLVED MULTIFREQUENCY RADIO OBSERVATIONS OF GG Tau

Andrews

Chandler

Isella

et al. 2014

ApJ

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We present subarcsecond resolution observations of continuum emission associated with the GG Tau quadruple star system at wavelengths of 1.3, 2.8, 7.3, and 50 mm. These data confirm that the GG Tau A binary is encircled by a circumbinary ring at a radius of 235 AU with a FWHM width of ∼60 AU. We find no clear evidence for a radial gradient in the spectral shape of the ring, suggesting that the particle size distribution is spatially homogeneous on angular scales 0. 1. A central point source, likely associated with the primary component (GG Tau Aa), exhibits a composite spectrum from dust and free-free emission. Faint emission at 7.3 mm is observed toward the low-mass star GG Tau Ba, although its origin remains uncertain. Using these measurements of the resolved, multifrequency emission structure of the GG Tau A system, models of the far-infrared to radio spectrum are developed to place constraints on the grain size distribution and dust mass in the circumbinary ring. The non-negligible curvature present in the ring spectrum implies a maximum particle size of 1-10 mm, although we are unable to place strong constraints on the distribution shape. The corresponding dust mass is 30-300 M ⊕ , at a temperature of 20-30 K. We discuss how this significant concentration of relatively large particles in a narrow ring at a large radius might be produced in a local region of higher gas pressures (i.e., a particle "trap") located near the inner edge of the circumbinary disk.

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“…In addition to solving the missing-stellar-mass problem, the discovery of a fifth component in this system provides a logical explanation for the lack of submm/mm continuum emission around Ab attested by PdBI (Piétu et al 2011) and ALMA observations (Dutrey et al 2014). The Ab1 and Ab2 components are indeed surrounded by Roche lobes of radius ∼2 au.…”

Section: Consequences For the Dynamics Of The Systemmentioning

confidence: 94%

GG Tauri: the fifth element

Folco

Dutrey

Bouquin

et al. 2014

A&A

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We aim at unveiling the observational imprint of physical mechanisms that govern planetary formation in young, multiple systems. In particular, we investigate the impact of tidal truncation on the inner circumstellar disks. We observed the emblematic system GG Tau at high-angular resolution: a hierarchical quadruple system composed of low-mass T Tauri binary stars surrounded by a well studied, massive circumbinary disk in Keplerian rotation. We used the near-IR 4-telescope combiner PIONIER on the VLTI and sparse-aperture-masking techniques on VLT/NaCo to probe this proto-planetary system at sub-au scales. We report the discovery of a significant closure-phase signal in H and K s bands that can be reproduced with an additional low-mass companion orbiting GG Tau Ab, at a (projected) separation ρ = 31.7 ± 0.2 mas (4.4 au) and PA = 219.6 ± 0.3• . This finding offers a simple explanation for several key questions in this system, including the missing-stellar-mass problem and the asymmetry of continuum emission from the inner dust disks observed at millimeter wavelengths. Composed of now five co-eval stars with 0.02 ≤ M ≤ 0.7 M , the quintuple system GG Tau has become an ideal test case to constrain stellar evolution models at young ages (few 10 6 yr).

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High resolution imaging of the GG Tauri system at 267 GHz

Cited by 30 publications

References 11 publications

Possible planet formation in the young, low-mass, multiple stellar system GG Tau A

Possible planet formation in the young, low-mass, multiple stellar system GG Tau A

RESOLVED MULTIFREQUENCY RADIO OBSERVATIONS OF GG Tau

GG Tauri: the fifth element

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