The GRAVITY young stellar object survey

VII. The inner dusty disks of T Tauri stars^★

¹ Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, 38000 Grenoble, France
e-mail: karine.perraut@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr
² I. Physikalisches Institut, Universität zu Köln, Zülpicher Strasse 77, 50937, Köln, Germany
³ Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
⁴ Unidad Mixta Internacional Franco-Chilena de Astronomía (CNRS UMI 3386), Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Camino El Observatorio 1515, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile
⁵ Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 31 Fitzwilliam Place, D02, XF86 Dublin, Ireland
⁶ Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Giessenbachstrasse, 85741 Garching bei München, Germany
⁷ Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Apdo. Postal 70264, Ciudad de México 04510, Mexico
⁸ LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, PSL Research University, CNRS, Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ. Paris 06, Univ. Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, France
⁹ Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, Postbus 9513, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
¹⁰ Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy, Auf dem Hügel 69, 53121 Bonn, Germany
¹¹ School of Physics, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland
¹² CENTRA, Centro de Astrofísica e Gravitação, Instituto Superior Técnico, Avenida Rovisco Pais 1, 1049 Lisboa, Portugal
¹³ Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, Campo Grande, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal
¹⁴ Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Engenharia, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
¹⁵ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, via Moiariello 16, 80131 Napoli, Italy

Received: 24 June 2021
Accepted: 10 August 2021

Abstract

Context. T Tauri stars are surrounded by dust and gas disks. As material reservoirs from which matter is accreted onto the central star and planets are built, these protoplanetary disks play a central role in star and planet formation.

Aims. We aim at spatially resolving at sub-astronomical unit (sub-au) scales the innermost regions of the protoplanetary disks around a sample of T Tauri stars to better understand their morphology and composition.

Methods. Thanks to the sensitivity and the better spatial frequency coverage of the GRAVITY instrument of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer, we extended our homogeneous data set of 27 Herbig stars and collected near-infrared K-band interferometric observations of 17 T Tauri stars, spanning effective temperatures and luminosities in the ranges of ~4000–6000 K and ~0.4–10 L_⊙, respectively. We focus on the continuum emission and develop semi-physical geometrical models to fit the interferometric data and search for trends between the properties of the disk and the central star.

Results. As for those of their more massive counterparts, the Herbig Ae/Be stars, the best-fit models of the inner rim of the T Tauri disks correspond to wide rings. The GRAVITY measurements extend the radius-luminosity relation toward the smallest luminosities (0.4–10 L_⊙). As observed previously, in this range of luminosities, the R ∝ L^1∕2 trend line is no longer valid, and the K-band sizes measured with GRAVITY appear to be larger than the predicted sizes derived from sublimation radius computation. We do not see a clear correlation between the K-band half-flux radius and the mass accretion rate onto the central star. Besides, having magnetic truncation radii in agreement with the K-band GRAVITY sizes would require magnetic fields as strong as a few kG, which should have been detected, suggesting that accretion is not the main process governing the location of the half-flux radius of the inner dusty disk. The GRAVITY measurements agree with models that take into account the scattered light, which could be as important as thermal emission in the K band for these cool stars. The N-to-K band size ratio may be a proxy for disentangling disks with silicate features in emission from disks with weak and/or in absorption silicate features (i.e., disks with depleted inner regions and/or with large gaps). The GRAVITY data also provide inclinations and position angles of the inner disks. When compared to those of the outer disks derived from ALMA images of nine objects of our sample, we detect clear misalignments between both disks for four objects.

Conclusions. The combination of improved data quality with a significant and homogeneous sample of young stellar objects allows us to revisit the pioneering works done on the protoplanetary disks by K-band interferometry and to test inner disk physics such as the inner rim morphology and location.