Uncertainties of the dust grain size in protoplanetary disks retrieved from millimeter continuum observations

¹ Purple Mountain Observatory & Key Laboratory of Radio Astronomy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 10 Yuanhua Road, Qixia District, Nanjing 210023, PR China
e-mail: yliu@pmo.ac.cn
² School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Science and Technology of China, 96 Jinzhai Road, Hefei 230026, PR China

Received: 17 January 2024
Accepted: 13 June 2024

Abstract

Context. Investigating the dust grain size and its dependence on substructures in protoplanetary disks is a crucial step in understanding the initial process of planet formation. Spectral indices derived from millimeter observations are used as a common probe for grain size. Converting observed spectral indices into grain sizes is a complex task that involves solving the radiative transfer equation, taking into account the disk structure and dust properties.

Aims. Under the assumption of vertically isothermal disks, the solution to the radiative transfer equation can be approximated with an analytic expression, with which the fitting procedure can be done very fast. Our work aims to investigate the applicability of this method to grain size retrieval.

Methods. We ran reference radiative transfer models with known disk properties, and generated four synthetic images at wavelengths of 0.8, 1.3, 3, and 7.8 mm, representing high-resolution continuum observations. Rings and gaps were considered in the setup. We fit the synthetic images using the analytic solution to investigate the circumstances under which the input grain sizes can be recovered.

Results. Fitting images at only two wavelengths is not sufficient to retrieve the grain size. Fitting three images improves the retrieval of grain size, but the dust surface density is still not well recovered. When taking all of the four images into account, degeneracies between different parameters are highly reduced, and consequently the best-fit grain sizes are consistent with the reference setup at almost all radii. We find that the inclination angle has a significant impact on the fitting results. For disks with low inclinations, the analytic approach works quite well. However, when the disk is tilted above ~60°, neither the grain size nor the dust surface density can be constrained, as the inclination effect will smooth out all substructures in the radial intensity profile of the disk.