Large Myr-old Disks Are Not Severely Depleted of Gas-phase CO or Carbon

Abstract

We present an ACA search for [C i ] 1–0 emission at 492 GHz toward large T Tauri disks (gas radii ≳ 200 au) in the ∼1–3 Myr-old Lupus star-forming region. Combined with Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array 12 m archival data for IM Lup, we report [C i ] 1–0 detections in six out of 10 sources, thus doubling the known detections toward T Tauri disks. We also identify four Keplerian double-peaked profiles and demonstrate that the [C i ] 1–0 fluxes correlate with ^13 CO, C ^18 O, and ^12 CO(2–1) fluxes, as well as with the gas disk outer radius measured from the latter transition. These findings are in line with the expectation that atomic carbon traces the disk surface. In addition, we compare the carbon and carbon monoxide (CO) line luminosities of a Lupus and literature sample with [C i ] 1–0 detections with predictions from the self-consistent disk thermo-chemical models of Ruaud et al. These models adopt interstellar medium carbon and oxygen elemental abundances as input parameters. With the exception of the disk around Sz 98, we find that these models reproduce all the available line luminosities and upper limits, with gas masses comparable to or higher than the minimum-mass solar nebula and gas-to-dust mass ratios ≥10. Thus, we conclude that the majority of large Myr-old disks conform to the simple expectation that they are not significantly depleted in gas, CO, or carbon.

Keywords

• Protoplanetary disks
• Exoplanet formation
• CO line emission
• Millimeter astronomy