Dual-band Observations of the Asymmetric Ring around CIDA 9A: Dead or Alive?

Abstract

While the most exciting explanation of the observed dust asymmetries in protoplanetary disks is the presence of protoplanets, other mechanisms can also form the dust features. This paper presents dual-wavelength Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations of a large asymmetric dusty ring around the M-type star CIDA 9A. We detect a dust asymmetry in both 1.3 and 3.1 mm data. To characterize the asymmetric structure, a parametric model is used to fit the observed visibilities. We report a tentative azimuthal shift of the dust emission peaks between the observations at the two wavelengths. This shift is consistent with a dust trap caused by a vortex, which may be formed by an embedded protoplanet or other hydrodynamical instabilities, such as a dead zone. Deep high-spatial-resolution observations of dust and molecular gas are needed to constrain the mechanisms that formed the observed millimeter cavity and dust asymmetry in the protoplanetary disk around CIDA 9A.

Keywords

• Circumstellar disks
• Planet formation
• Protoplanetary disks