Origin and evolution of angular momentum of class II disks

¹ Institut de Ciències del Cosmos, Universitat de Barcelona, IEEC-UB, Martí i Franqués 1, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
² INAF – Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, Via Fosso del Cavaliere 100, 00133 Roma, Italy
³ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dartmouth College, 6127 Wilder Laboratory, Hanover, NH 03755, USA
⁴ Department of Physics, PO Box 64, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
⁵ Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Øster Voldgade 5–7, 1350 Copenhagen, Denmark

^★ Corresponding author; veli.matti.pelkonen@gmail.com

Received: 10 May 2024
Accepted: 31 January 2025

Abstract

Context. While class II pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars have already accreted most of their mass, the continued inflow of fresh material via Bondi-Hoyle accretion acts as an additional mass reservoir for their circumstellar disks. This may explain the observed accretion rates of PMS stars, as well as observational inconsistencies in the mass and angular momentum balance of their disks.

Aims. Using a new simulation that reproduces the stellar initial mass function (IMF), we want to quantify the role of Bondi-Hoyle accretion in the formation of class II disks, as well as address the prospect of its observational detection with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Methods. We studied the mass and angular momentum of the accreting gas using passively advected tracer particles in the simulation, and we carried out radiative transfer calculations of near-infrared scattering to generate synthetic JWST observations of Bondi-Hoyle trails of PMS stars.

Results. Gas accreting on class II PMS stars approximately 1 Myr after their formation has enough mass and angular momentum to strongly affect the evolution of the preexisting disks. The accreted angular momentum is large enough to also explain the observed size of class II disks. The orientation of the angular momentum vector can differ significantly from that of the previously accreted gas, which may result in a significant disk warping or misalignment. We also predict that JWST observations of class II stars will be able to detect Bondi-Hoyle trails with a 80%-100% success rate with only a 2 min exposure time, depending on the filter, if stars with both an accretion rate Ṁ > 5 × 10⁻¹⁰ M_⊙/yr and a luminosity of L > 0.5 L_⊙ are selected.