Revealing Hidden Disk Substructures in Protoplanetary Disks: A Broader Statistical View of Taurus Disk Properties using ALMA

Recent high-resolution ALMA protoplanetary disk surveys suggest that disk dust substructures, usually in the form of gaps and rings, are common. These intriguing disk features likely emerge from interactions between nascent planets and disk material. However, previous studies of disk substructures have often been limited in sample size, which potentially leads to a biased interpretation of the young planet population. In this project, we present a homogeneous analysis of the dust grain distribution in 79 disks with stellar hosts of spectral type earlier than M3 in the nearby Taurus star-forming region (~140pc) where ALMA data offers resolutions better than 0.2”. Radial profiles of millimeter continuum emission are derived from both image and nonparametric visibility fitting. Based on our analysis of these profiles, we have identified new disk substructures and revealed their prevalence in large disks (R > 0.25-0.3”). Our calculations based on substructure properties suggest that most of them are likely created by Saturn-like (<1 Jupiter mass) planets. This statistical view of disk properties offers an unprecedentedly large Taurus disk sample analysis to advance our understanding of planetary formation and diversity in planetary architecture around young stellar objects.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1745460.