The Warped Debris Disk of HD100546

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0505088

From: Alice C. Quillen [view email]

Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 05:10:13 GMT   (488kb)

We propose that the two armed spiral features seen in visible HST images of
scattered light in HD100546’s debris disk are caused by surface gradient
variation of a warped optically thin disk. A tilt of 6-10 degrees from the
symmetry plane can cause the observed surface brightness variations providing
the disk is geometrically thin, optically thin and very twisted (highly warped)
at radii greater than 200 AU where the spiral features are seen. HD100546’s
disk, if viewed edge-on, would appear similar to that of Beta Pictorus. A disk
initially misaligned with a planetary system, will become warped due to
precession induced by planetesimal bodies and planets. However, the twistedness
of HD100546’s disk cannot be explained by precession during the lifetime of the
system induced by a single Jovian mass planet within the clearing at $\sim 13$
AU. One possible explanation for the corrugated disk is that precession was
induced by massive of bodies embedded in the disk at larger radius. This would
require approximately a Jupiter mass of bodies well outside the central
clearing at 13 AU and within the location of the spiral features or at radii
approximately between 50-200 AU.

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SLAC-SPIRES HEP (refers to ,
cited by, arXiv reformatted)

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