A high resolution study of spatial and spectral variations of dust properties in the 49 Ceti debris disk

The optically thin dust in debris disks marks the end stages of planetary system formation and evolution, representing a scaled-up version of our own Solar system’s Kuiper Belt. Since the ages of these main sequence stars are typically much larger than the lifetime of the dust, some mechanism is required to stir the disk and prompt the constant replenishment of dust grains through collisions of planetesimals. Here we present a high-resolution, multiwavelength study of the dust disk around the nearby A star 49 Ceti that aims to distinguish the mechanism responsible for stirring the dust belt. We combine new 1.5” resolution observations of the 1.3mm continuum emission and 0.3” resolution observations of the 850 um continuum emission with archival 0.5” resolution observations of the 614 um continuum emission from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. We map the spatially resolved spectral index to gain insight into variations in the power law index, q, and use MCMC methods to model the parametric structure of the disk, including the spatially resolved scale height. Our results aid us in distinguishing between several different proposed stirring mechanisms and place constraints on the total dynamical mass embedded within the disk.