Ongoing Flyby in the Young Multiple System UX Tauri
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A&A 639, L1 (2020) Astronomy https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202038356 & c F. Ménard et al. 2020 Astrophysics LETTER TO THE EDITOR Ongoing flyby in the young multiple system UX Tauri? F. Ménard1, N. Cuello1,2,3 , C. Ginski4,5, G. van der Plas1, M. Villenave1,6, J.-F. Gonzalez3, C. Pinte7,1, M. Benisty1, A. Boccaletti8, D. J. Price7, Y. Boehler1, S. Chripko9, J. de Boer5, C. Dominik4, A. Garufi10, R. Gratton11, J. Hagelberg12, Th. Henning13, M. Langlois3, A. L. Maire14,13, P. Pinilla13, G. J. Ruane15, H. M. Schmid16, R. G. van Holstein5,6, A. Vigan17, A. Zurlo17,18,19 , N. Hubin20, A. Pavlov13, S. Rochat1, J.-F. Sauvage21,17, and E. Stadler1 1 Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, 38000 Grenoble, France e-mail: [email protected] 2 Instituto de Astrofísica, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile 3 Univ Lyon, Univ Claude Bernard Lyon1, Ens de Lyon, CNRS, Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon UMR5574, 69230 Saint-Genis-Laval, France 4 Sterrenkundig Instituut Anton Pannekoek, Science Park 904, 1098 XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands 5 Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, PO Box 9513, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands 6 European Southern Observatory, Alonso de Córdova 3107, Casilla 19001 Vitacura, Santiago, Chile 7 School of Physics and Astronomy, Monash University, Clayton, Vic 3800, Australia 8 LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Univ. Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 5 place Jules Janssen, 92195 Meudon, France 9 CECI, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, CERFACS, Toulouse, France 10 INAF, Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, Largo Enrico Fermi 5, 50125 Firenze, Italy 11 INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Vicolo dell’Osservatorio 5, 35122 Padova, Italy 12 Geneva Observatory, University of Geneva, Chemin des Mailettes 51, 1290 Versoix, Switzerland 13 Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany 14 STAR Institute, Université de Liège, Allée du Six Août 19c, 4000 Liège, Belgium 15 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, CA 91109, USA 16 Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics, ETH Zurich, Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse 27, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland 17 Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, CNES, LAM, Marseille, France 18 Núcleo de Astronomía, Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Universidad Diego Portales, Av. Ejercito 441, Santiago, Chile 19 Escuela de Ingeniería Industrial, Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Universidad Diego Portales, Av. Ejercito 441, Santiago, Chile 20 European Southern Observatory (ESO), Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, 85748 Garching, Germany 21 DOTA, ONERA, Université Paris Saclay, 91123 Palaiseau, France Received 5 May 2020 / Accepted 1 June 2020 ABSTRACT We present observations of the young multiple system UX Tauri to look for circumstellar disks and for signs of dynamical interactions. We obtained SPHERE/IRDIS deep differential polarization images in the J and H bands. We also used ALMA archival CO data. Large extended spirals are well detected in scattered light coming out of the disk of UX Tau A. The southern spiral forms a bridge between UX Tau A and C. These spirals, including the bridge connecting the two stars, all have a CO (3–2) counterpart seen by ALMA. The disk of UX Tau C is detected in scattered light. It is much smaller than the disk of UX Tau A and has a major axis along a different position angle, suggesting a misalignment. We performed Phantom SPH hydrodynamical models to interpret the data. The scattered light spirals, CO emission spirals and velocity patterns of the rotating disks, and the compactness of the disk of UX Tau C all point to a scenario in which UX Tau A has been perturbed very recently (∼1000 years) by the close passage of UX Tau C. Key words. protoplanetary disks – circumstellar matter – stars: pre-main sequence – binaries: general 1. Introduction million years of a stellar cluster, Pfalzner(2013) and Winter et al. (2018a) estimated that the probability of a stellar encounter can Star formation occurs in molecular clouds where the stellar den- be on the order of 30% for solar-type stars, a flyby being defined sity is higher than in the field and the probability for encounters in this case as a single passage within 100–1000 au. These calcu- and dynamical interactions is enhanced. The presence of other lations assumed a background stellar density that is larger than stars in the vicinity of a forming young stellar and planetary sys- in Taurus. In Taurus the stellar density is low (1–10 stars pc−3) tem can dramatically affect the disk morphology and evolution and at first sight the flyby rate would be equivalently low. How- (Pfalzner 2003; Vincke et al. 2015; Bate 2018). ever, the stellar distribution in Taurus is patchy; several denser The probability of a system to undergo a flyby decreases groups have been identified in Taurus (e.g., Joncour et al. 2018) rapidly with time in a stellar association in unison with the stellar and there is a higher probability that encounters might happen in density, which decreases with cluster expansion. During the first these groups. ? Movies associated to Fig. 3 are available at Clarke & Pringle(1993) considered coplanar parabolic https://www.aanda.org encounters between equal-mass stars with periastron separations L1, page 1 of7 Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. A&A 639, L1 (2020) on the order of the initial disk size and found that prograde 1.0 encounters were the most destructive. These prograde encoun- ters tidally truncate the disk and unbind material that is either 102 captured by the perturber or escapes (Breslau et al. 2017). Ret- 0.5 rograde encounters, on the contrary, were found to be much less ) c perturbative. More recently, Cuello et al.(2019) showed through e s c r hydrodynamical simulations – including dust and gas – that the a ( 0.0 solids within the disk react differently than the gas to the per- C E 1 turbation because of gas drag and radial drift. This dynamical D 10 effect renders the gas spirals rich in micron-sized grains (well coupled to the gas) and hence detectable in scattered light. In 0.5 addition, the disk seen in thermal emission is expected to be more compact since larger grains are more prone to radial drift 1.0 100 (Weidenschilling 1977). The detailed observational signatures of 1.0 0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 these flyby models – obtained through radiative transfer post- RA (arcsec) processing – can be found in Cuello et al.(2020). Fig. 1. Qφ, J-band (linearly) polarized intensity image of the disk of Only a few cases of flybys have been observed so far: RW UX Tau A, shown in logarithmic scale. The intensity scale is in arbitrary Aur (Dai et al. 2015), HV Tau and DO Tau (Winter et al. 2018b), detector units, levels below 1 (i.e., ∼2.5 times the rms noise level at 00 and AS 205 (Kurtovic et al. 2018). Zapata et al.(2020) recently ≥1 ) are set to black. The gray circle traces the 185 mas coronagraphic suggested that UX Tauri might also be the site of dynamical mask. The continuum ring detected by ALMA (see Fig. B.2, left insert) interactions. In this Letter we present SPHERE images of the is shown in black contours traced at 60% of the ALMA continuum peak level. UX Tauri multiple system. Supported by tailored hydrodynami- cal simulations, the new data strongly favors a recent passage of UX Tauri C near UX Tauri A, whose disk is still being perturbed. (Beuzit et al. 2019). Two data sets were obtained in the broad- The UX Tauri system includes four T Tauri stars. It is band H filter (as part of the GO program 0100.C-0452; PI located in the Taurus molecular cloud at d = 147 ± 2 pc (Gaia Benisty) and one was taken in the J band (as part of the SPHERE Collaboration 2018). This system consists of a primary star DISK GTO program 096.C-0248). The H-band data were taken (UX Tau A) and two companions: UX Tau B at ∼500:8 to the west on 2017 October 6 and 12, the J-band data on 2015 Decem- 00 ber 18. The final data reduction was performed with the IRDAP and UX Tau C at ∼2:7 to the south of the primary. UX Tau B 1 is itself a tight (∼000:1) binary (e.g., Duchêne 1999; Correia et al. pipeline presented in van Holstein et al.(2020). The data reduc- 2006; Schaefer et al. 2014). Kraus & Hillenbrand(2009) esti- tion process is described in detail in the same paper. The disks of UX Tau A and UX Tau C are both resolved in mated the stellar masses at 1:3±0:4 M for A and 0:16±0:04 M for C. Zapata et al.(2020) report dynamical masses from CO the J and H bands. Figure1 shows the J-band polarized inten- sity image of UX Tau A in color, with the ALMA continuum data: 1.4 ± 0.6 M for A, and (0:067 ± 0:029= sin i) M for C. So far only the disk of UX Tau A has been detected. Andrews et al. ring overlayed in black contours. The SPHERE image shows (2011), using the Submillimeter Array (SMA), resolved an inner that the disk is brighter on the western side, suggesting this is cavity around the central star extending to a radius of 25 au: the the front side, facing us.