Protostars and Planets VI, Heidelberg, July 15-20, 2013

Poster 2B026

Sculpting the disk around TCha

Olofsson, Johan (MPIA, Heidelberg, Germany)
Benisty, Myriam (IPAG, Grenoble, France)
Le Bouquin, Jean-Baptiste (IPAG, Grenoble, France)
Berger, Jean-Philippe (ESO, Garching, Germany)
Lacour, Sylvestre (LESIA, Paris, France)
Menard, Francois (Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile)
Henning, Thomas (MPIA, Heidelberg, Germany)
Crida, Aurelien (University of Nice, France)
Burtscher, Leonard (MPE, Garching, Germany)
Meeus, Gwendolyn (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain)
Ratzka, Thorsten (Universitäts-Sternwarte München, Germany)
Pinte, Christophe (IPAG, Grenoble, France)
Augereau, Jean-Charles (IPAG, Grenoble, France)
Malbet, Fabien (IPAG, Grenoble, France)
Lazareff, Bernard (IPAG, Grenoble, France)
Traub, Wesley (NASA/JPL, Pasadena, USA)

Abstract:
Circumstellar disks are believed to be the birhtplace of planets and should dissipate on a timescale of a few Myr. Formation of a giant planet inside the disk is expected to contribute significantly to the dissipation and evolution of the disk, as material is pushed away by the newly formed planet. I will present recent results on the 7 Myr old transition disk around TCha, based on a multi-wavelength, multi-spatial resolution interferometric dataset obtained at the VLT and VLTI. We find the disk to be best described by a narrow inner disk close to the star (0.1 AU) and an outer disk, possibly narrow as well (~10 AU) located at about 12 AU from the star. We revisit the earlier detection of a candidate companion inside the large gap. The outer disk being in the field-of-view of the NaCo/SAM instrument, we discuss how its contribution contaminate short-baseline interferometric measurements. We find that anisotropic scattering by dust grains in the outer disk can explain the measured closure phases, at the same confidence level as the candidate companion. Nonetheless, I will show that the entire system displays specific features, such as the large gap and the small extent of the outer disk, that can be best explained by the presence of at least one giant planets. Further investigations, for instance via direct imaging, will complement and improve our understanding of this intriguing and complex system.

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