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

Poster 2B028

The inner disks of classical T Tauri stars in NGC 2264

Sousa, Alana (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais)
McGinnis, Pauline (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais)
Alencar, Silvia (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais)
Bouvier, Jérôme (Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble)
Teixeira, Paula (Institut für Astrophysik Universität Wien)
Stauffer, John (Spitzer Science Center)
The CSI2264 Team, ()

Abstract:
NGC 2264 is a young (~3 Myr) stellar cluster that was observed twice by the CoRoT satellite, for 23 days in 2008 and 40 days in 2011. Simultaneouslys with the 2011 CoRoT observations, a multiwavelength campaign was organized that included 30 days of Spitzer observations at 3.6 and 4.5 microns, 3.5 days of Chandra data, VLT FLAMES spectroscopy and U band photometry from Megacam (CFHT). We obtained simultaneous high precision light curves in the optical and near IR for more than 500 cluster members, about 150 of which are classical T Tauri stars. As shown in the first CoRoT campaign, a fraction of the accreting systems exhibit optical light curves with deep minima that vary substantially in width and depth in a rotational timescale. These light curves are interpreted as being due to an inner disk warp that eclipses the star as the system rotates, as observed in AA Tau, a well studied CTTS seen at high inclination. This warp is thought to be created by the star-disk interaction mediated by a stellar magnetic field inclined with respect to the stellar rotation axis. The observed variability indicates that the star-disk interaction is dynamic and the occulting material is inhomogeneous and located close to the co-rotation radius of the star-disk system. We present the photometric and spectroscopic analysis of the AA Tau-like CTTSs observed in NGC 2264. Initial light curve model results indicate that an inner disk warp located near the corotation radius can indeed explain the observed variability and that, if the variability is attributed to extinction alone, the properties of the dust in the inner disk are substantially different from the ISM.

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