Issue |
A&A
Volume 499, Number 1, May III 2009
|
|
---|---|---|
Page(s) | 163 - 173 | |
Section | Interstellar and circumstellar matter | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/200811275 | |
Published online | 19 March 2009 |
Linear polarization in forbidden lines of the T Tauri star RY Tauri
H. Akitaya1,7 - Y. Ikeda2 - K. S. Kawabata3 - K. Matsuda4 - A. Okazaki5 - M. Seki6
1 - ELT Project Office, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan,
Osawa 2-21-1, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588, Japan
2 -
Photocoding, Higashi-Hashimoto 3-16-8-101, Sagamihara,
Kanagawa 229-1104, Japan
3 -
Astrophysical Science Center, Hiroshima University,
1-3-1 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima 739-8526, Japan
4 -
Nishi-Harima Astronomical Observatory, Sayo-cho,
Hyogo 679-5313, Japan
5 -
Department of Science Education, Gunma University, Aramaki,
Maebashi, Gunma 371-8510, Japan
6 -
Astronomical Institute, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku
University, Aramaki, Aoba, Sendai 980-8578, Japan
7 -
Visiting Astronomer, Okayama Astrophysical Observatory,
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Asakuchi, Okayama
719-0232, Japan
Received 2 November 2008 / Accepted 6 March 2009
Abstract
We performed high-dispersion spectropolarimetry for the T Tauri star RY
Tauri and measured linear polarization in seven forbidden lines
of [OI]
5577, 6300, 6364, [NII]
6583,
[SII]
6716, 6731, and [FeII]
7155.
This is the first high-dispersion spectropolarimetry
for forbidden lines in T Tauri stars.
We successfully detected intrinsic polarization in the [OI]
6300 line.
The intrinsic [OI]
6300 polarization corrected for the
foreground polarization was derived as
and
,
whereas
the polarization of the nearby continuum was
and
.
The position angle of [OI]
6300 polarization is compared with the
circumstellar structures found by previous studies.
It is nearly perpendicular to the disk long-axis and
parallel to the optical H
jet.
Both the perpendicularity and parallelism potentially suggest
relatively axisymmetric
distribution of the [OI]
6300 emitting region and surrounding
scattering medium.
We constructed a simplified scattering model composed of a point source
on a jet axis as an [OI]
6300 emitter and a flat disk with an inner hole
as a scatterer.
Applying the observed polarization to the model suggests
that the [OI]
6300 emission emerges close to
the central star with a possible separation of less than a few
0.1 AU.
Key words: stars: pre-main sequence - circumstellar matter - polarization - techniques: polarimetric - techniques: spectroscopic - stars: individual: RY Tauri
1 Introduction
T Tauri stars (TTSs) are low-mass (less than about two solar masses) pre-main sequence stars at a stage of evolution during which the central star is contracting and gathering matter through its circumstellar disk. Outflows of TTSs such as jets and winds play an important role in the evolution of the star itself and of the circumstellar disk because they regulate mass and angular momentum of the star and disk system. However, the launching mechanism of the outflows, for which the X-wind model (Shang et al. 2007) and the disk wind model (Pudritz et al. 2007) have been proposed, is still controversial. To clarify the outflow mechanism, it is crucial to probe the inner structure of the outflows close to the central star on the sub-AU scale where the flow emerges.
Forbidden emission lines (FELs) are suitable for probing outflows of TTSs because they usually trace only outflows. Furthermore, their optically-thin and absorption-free properties are very helpful in interpreting the lines physically. Permitted lines such as Balmer lines of hydrogen also trace outflows, but their interpretation is complicated in general because those lines often trace infall phenomena as well and absorption features varying in short time scales also get mixed in the spectrum.
Since the 1990s, much work has been done by high-dispersion spectrometry as well as by long-slit
spectrometry for FELs in TTSs
(Hirth et al. 1994a,1997,1994b; Hartigan et al. 1995; Hamann 1994; Bacciotti et al. 2000).
They revealed both the velocity and spatial distribution of forbidden emission
lines in TTSs with resolutions of a few km s-1 and
0.1 arcsec, respectively, and established general insights into the structure of jets and winds around TTSs
(see Ray et al. 2007).
However, higher spatial resolution is still required to approach the launching region
of outflows close to the central star.
Recently, new observational efforts
such as spectro-astrometry
(Takami et al. 2001)
and long slit spectroscopy with an adaptive
optics
(Pyo et al. 2006,2003)
have been made to reveal the circumstellar
structure of TTSs down to AU scales.
Table 1: Observation journal of high-dispersion (R=7000) spectropolarimetry for RY Tauri.
High-dispersion spectropolarimetry of emission lines is an alternative tool for investigating the structure around the emitting region close to the central star on a sub-AU scale because these lines are expected to show linear polarization through light scattering in the circumstellar structures and to give geometrical information on the distribution of emitters and scatterers. Vink et al. (2003,2005) measured linear polarization in ten TTSs at an H
RY Tauri is one of the brightest, most frequently observed classical T
Tauri stars with a mass of
,
age of
(Hartigan et al. 1995) and
spectral type of G1-G3IV (Petrov et al. 1999; Holtzman et al. 1986).
Though deduced parameters differ slightly among authors,
the object evidently belongs to the group of classical T Tauri stars.
In Sect. 2, we present
high-dispersion spectropolarimetry for RY Tauri and
the estimation of the foreground polarization toward the object.
In Sect. 3, we show the results on polarization measurements of
FELs in RY Tauri and report
the significant detection of linear polarization in an
[OI]6300 emission line.
We discuss the emitting region of the [OI]
6300 line
by comparing the detected polarization with the scattering model in Sect. 4.
We summarize the results and discussions in Sect. 5.
2 Observation and data reduction
2.1 High-dispersion spectropolarimetry for RY Tauri
We obtained high-dispersion linear polarization spectra of
RY Tauri using
the echelle spectropolarimeter LIPS (Ikeda et al. 2003)
attached on a Cassegrain focus of the University of Hawaii 2.2-m
telescope with an f/31 secondary
mirror at Mauna Kea Observatory.
Observations were carried out at three epochs:
March 1, 2002; March 3, 2002; and October 26, 2002.
Using an entrance slit of 0.2 mm width, which corresponds to 0.6 arcsec
on the sky, and a 300 g/mm grating as a cross disperser,
we obtained spectra of intensity and linear polarization at
the spectral resolution of
or velocity resolution of
over a spectral range
from about 5300
to 8600
on an EEV 2K
2K pixels CCD.
An observation journal is summarized in Table 1.
We obtained either thirteen or fourteen orders echelle spectra
at each exposure.
Each order consists of a pair of two spectra that are
perpendicularly polarized rays split by a Wollaston prism
after being modulated by a superachromatic half-wave plate.
We exposed the object at four different position angles
of the half-wave plate
from
to
with a 22.5
step.
The data was reduced using both IRAF
(Tody 1993),
and
the C and Java software originally developed by our group.
After the usual reduction procedures including
bias subtraction, bad pixels correction, cosmic-ray subtraction,
flattening, extraction of the spectra and wavelength coordinate
allocation,
we obtained eight independent spectra that
consist of pairs of perpendicularly polarized spectra at four position angles
of the half-wave plate.
We finally reduced those spectra according to
the procedure described in Kawabata et al. (1999), and
obtained Stokes I, Q, and Uspectra, which can be converted into normalized Stokes parameters of
and
,
or polarization degree p and position angle
using the relations
p= [(Q/I)2+(U/I)2]1/2 and
.
The instrumental polarization was measured by observing unpolarized standard stars each night. They were below about 0.05-0.15% and stable over the whole wavelength range. We subtracted the instrumental polarization averaged over the unpolarized standard stars at each observing run from observed polarization spectra. Our instrument avoids the problems of ``ripples'' in a polarimetric spectrum (Harries & Howarth 1996) by using an AstroPribor Super-Achromatic Zero-Order Waveplate as a half-wave plate (Samoylov et al. 2004; Ikeda et al. 2003). We achieved a polarimetric accuracy of better than 0.1% without any corrections for ripples.
The instrumental origin of polarization position angle on the sky was determined to an accuracy of about 0.25 degrees by measuring strongly polarized standard stars selected from Schmidt et al. (1992). Both the wavelength dependency of instrumental depolarization and that of the optical axis of the half-wave plate were determined from the observation of artificially polarized stars through a Glan-Taylor prism followed by the entrance slit. The typical depolarization factor, which is to be applied to the observed polarimetric spectra, was less than 0.5% of the observed polarization. The optical axis of the half wave plate was determined with an accuracy of 0.05 degrees.
The wavelength coordinate of each spectrum was determined
using the emission lines of a Th-Ar arc lamp.
It was converted to the velocity coordinate at rest frame on the object
using the deduced heliocentric radial velocity of
,
measured from a peak velocity of a photospheric
LiI
absorption line,
which is consistent with the previous measurements
(Hartmann et al. 1986; Petrov et al. 1999; Hartmann & Stauffer 1989).
The final accuracy of radial velocity was within several km s-1.
As for [OI] forbidden emission lines, we subtracted telluric airglow emission mixed in the observed spectra. The airglow spectrum was estimated from the nearby sky portions of the exposed spectrum.
The intensity of the airglow was 5-10% of the total observed intensity at [OI]
6300, 6-15% at [OI]
6364, and 34% at [OI]
5577, respectively.
Spectropolarimetric spectra of the [OI]
6300 line are shown in Fig. 1 as an example.
![]() |
Figure 1:
Observed intensity and linear polarization spectra of an [OI]
|
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2.2 Veiling
We estimated the veiling effect in
RY Tauri by measuring an equivalent width
of the photospheric LiI
absorption line.
The equivalent widths at three epochs were
,
,
and
,
respectively, and we deduced
the veiling as
,
,
and
,
respectively,
by applying the intrinsic equivalent width of photospheric LiI line of
measured by Basri et al. (1991).
Since practically no significant veiling effect was detected,
we neglect the effects of the veiling continuum from the hot gas on the
photosphere hereafter.
2.3 Stokes spectra for emission lines
The observed intensity profile is a blend of the forbidden emission line itself and the underlying photospheric continuum. We reduced the intensity and linear polarization Stokes spectra of each emission line by separating the underlying spectra on the simple assumption as follows:where the subscripts ``obs'', ``line'', and ``ph'' represent the values from the observation, emission line, and underlying photospheric continuum, respectively. Parameters


A photospheric spectrum
is not flat in general but
contains photospheric absorption features.
Spectral type of RY Tauri was
determined as G1-G3 IV by the previous high-dispersion spectroscopy
(Petrov et al. 1999; Holtzman et al. 1986).
Montes et al. (1999) presented
a digitized high-dispersion spectral atlas of late type stars
taken with the spectral resolution of R=12 000.
We applied their spectrum
of either HD 67228 (G1IVb) or HD 196755 (G2IV)
according to their wavelength coverage in the atlas
as a reference of the photospheric spectrum
of RY Tauri, after tuning the spectral resolution to that of
LIPS and making a correction for the rotational broadening by adopting
of RY Tauri
(Bouvier 1990; Petrov et al. 1999; Hartmann & Stauffer 1989).
The accuracy of coincidence between the estimated embedded photospheric
spectrum and observed spectrum
was 1-1.5% rms for typical spectral regions.
For an [NII]6583 line,
a wing of the H
line also underlies the line.
The wing was assumed to be so smooth that its influence
is correctly subtracted by the method described above.
We identified forbidden lines of
[OI]
5577, 6300, 6364, [SII]
6716, 6731,
[NII]
6583 and [FeII]
7155 in
the intensity spectra of RY Tauri.
The deduced intensity profiles after subtracting an underlying continuum
spectrum are shown in Fig. 2.
![]() |
Figure 2: Intensity profiles of forbidden emission lines. A normalized photospheric spectrum was subtracted from the raw spectrum normalized at continuum level. |
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2.4 Estimation of the foreground polarization toward RY Tauri
To investigate intrinsic polarization of the object itself, the precise determination and subtraction of its foreground interstellar polarization is crucial. We estimated the foreground polarization toward RY Tauri by a series of low-resolution spectropolarimetries for carefully selected field stars around RY Tauri.
We selected five field stars based on two criteria:
a sufficiently small angular distance from RY Tauri
not exceeding about 1.5 degrees on the sky
and availability of a trigonometric parallax
measurement by the Hipparcos satellite (ESA 1997).
We measured their interstellar linear polarization spectrum
between 3600
to 9000
at the spectral resolution
of
(
)
using the low-resolution spectropolarimeter HBS
(Kawabata et al. 1999) attached on either the 91-cm telescope of Dodaira
Astronomical Observatory (DAO) or the 91-cm telescope of Okayama
Astrophysical Observatory (OAO).
The selected field stars and the observation journal are summarized
in Table 2.
Table 2: Observation journal of low-resolution spectropolarimetry of the field stars around RY Tauri.
Table 3: Measured interstellar polarization parameters of the field stars and estimated foreground polarization toward RY Tauri.
For a measured spectrum of polarization degree, we applied
the empirical Serkowski curve
(Serkowski et al. 1975; Whittet et al. 1992) given by
where
and deduced the peak polarization degree


![]() |
(6) |
and deduced the position angle at



![]() |
Figure 3:
Interstellar
Polarization map around RY Tauri.
Measured polarization of the field stars (solid lines) and
estimated foreground polarization toward RY Tauri (dashed line) are shown.
The line length indicates the polarization degree at polarization
peak (
|
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![]() |
Figure 4: The relation between interstellar polarization degree and distance around RY Tauri (open circles). The foreground polarization estimated at the distance of RY Tauri is also shown (filled diamond). |
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We estimated the foreground polarization toward RY Tauri statistically
from the interstellar polarization parameters measured toward these field stars.
The position angles for the field stars are well aligned
in the field (Fig. 3).
We simply averaged all the position angles at 5500
and estimated the position angle of polarization
toward RY Tauri as
degrees.
Similarly, the peak wavelength of the polarization curve and
the dependency of position angle against wavelength were
simply averaged over the field stars.
They were determined as
and
,
respectively.
We found the increment of the peak polarization degree with
distance as is shown in Fig. 4.
Assuming a linear relation
between
and the distance of a certain star das
we derived



We summarize the estimated parameters on the bottom line of Table 3. We can now estimate the foreground polarization toward RY Tauri at an arbitrary wavelength using these parameters and assumed functions.
Table 4: Measured polarization of forbidden emission lines and their nearby continuum.
3 Results
3.1 Intensity spectra of identified forbidden lines
Forbidden lines in T Tauri stars are generally thought to form in jets and winds around the central star (e.g., Kwan 1997). Each forbidden line generally consists of two components having different velocities: a low-velocity component (LVC) with a peak velocity blue-shifted in the range between 0 km s-1 and about -50 km s-1, and a high-velocity component (HVC) with that blue-shifted by -100 km s-1 or more.
The intensity spectra of the identified forbidden lines are shown in Fig. 2.
The [OI]5577 line is very weak but
marginally indicates the presence of only a sharp LVC at the rest velocity.
The [OI]
6300 and 6364 lines show both an LVC peak around
the rest velocity and the wing blue-shifted by -100 to -200 km s-1 which
might be an HVC.
The [SII]
6716 and 6731 lines
still show emission at rest velocity but the centroid of the
line seems more blue-shifted than that of the [OI] lines.
The [NII]
6583 line indicates only an HVC with
a peak velocity around -100 km s-1.
This tendency of velocity profiles for various kinds of FELs is
consistent with the previous general understandings on FELs of
TTSs (Hirth et al. 1997; Kwan 1997).
![]() |
Figure 5:
Linear polarization of the [OI] |
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3.2 Linear polarization in forbidden lines
The [OI]
6300 line is the strongest among the detected
FELs and we found slight deviation in polarization within the line from the nearby continuum
(Fig. 1),
while most of the lines are too weak to recognize
polarimetric features apparently in their polarization spectra.
We integrated both the intensity and polarization spectra over the
line profile as
and calculated the normalized Stokes parameters for the emission line by
where the subscript ``integ'' represents the integrated value over the emission line. We took a peak wavelength of the intensity profile as




A forbidden emission line is expected to show characteristic
polarization differing from that at the nearby continuum
in the case where the line photons take
different paths and scattering geometries before reaching us than those
of the continuum from the photosphere.
To evaluate the statistical significance of polarization in the emission
lines,
we deduced the differential polarization vector
,
and its amplitude
and the error
,
which are also included in Table 4.
The polarization of the [OI]
6300 line was
significantly differing from the nearby continuum at a
level
(
).
For the other FELs, we could not recognize statistically significant polarization
differing from the continuum polarization within a polarimetric
accuracy of 3-15 percent
in the present study.
The measured polarization vectors of the [OI]6300 line
at three epochs are
consistent with each other within their errors (Table 4).
We averaged these three vectors and
obtained
% as the [OI]
polarization. Hereafter, we regard this average as the polarization of the [OI]
line.
3.3 The intrinsic polarization of the [OI]
6300 line
The foreground interstellar dust between RY Tauri system and us, aligned by magnetic field, acts as a polarizing modulator with dichroism, which modulates the initial polarization originating in the object. In the theory of radiative transfer of polarized light, polarized light that has propagated through a dichroic medium is written as an incident Stokes vector multiplied by a Mueller matrix of the dichroic absorption. Assuming small amount of dichroism, which is appropriate for interstellar polarization with up to several percent, the modulation of polarization is approximately expressed as a simple vectorial addition of the normalized Stokes vector of the interstellar polarization to the incident normalized Stokes vector (Serkowski et al. 1962; Martin 1978).
Hence, the deduced polarization of the [OI]6300 line,
in Sect. 3.2,
is not the true intrinsic polarization originating in the object
but modified by foreground interstellar dust, namely
,
here
is an intrinsic normalized
Stokes vector of the [OI]
6300 line and
is a normalized stokes vector of the foreground interstellar
polarizaion.
Though the deduced vector is nearly unpolarized at first glance,
it is chance cancellation between the intrinsic and foreground polarizations.
This nearly zero polarization is consistent with the behavior of
the observed polarization spectra shown in Fig. 1.
If we measure a linear polarization spectrum
of an unpolarized emission line
overlapping a polarized continuum, as is the case for
the observed
,
we find dilution of the polarization degree across the line
without any changes of the position angle.
We can find the same behavior in Fig. 1.
The foreground interstellar polarization at 6300
is estimated as
%
from the parameters deduced in Sect. 2.4.
In Fig. 5, the polarization
of the [OI]
6300 line and that of the nearby
continuum at three epochs, the average
of three [OI]
6300 measurements, and the estimated foreground
polarization are ploted on the normalized Stokes q-u plane.
The apparent distinction between the observed [OI]
6300
polarization and the estimated foreground polarization, which is clearly
seen in Fig. 5, strongly suggests that the
[OI]
6300 line has significant intrinsic polarization originating in the RY Tauri system.
To evaluate the intrinsic polarization of the [OI] line,
the foreground interstellar polarization vector should be subtracted
from the observed polarization vector:
![]() |
(13) |
Finally, the intrinsic polarization of the [OI]

![$(q_{\rm [OI]}, u_{\rm [OI]})=(-0.96\pm 0.57, -0.66\pm 0.48)$](/articles/aa/full_html/2009/19/aa11275-08/img245.png)
![$p_{\rm [OI]}=1.17\pm0.54{\rm\%}$](/articles/aa/full_html/2009/19/aa11275-08/img246.png)
![$\theta_{\rm [OI]} = 107\hbox{$^\circ$ }\pm 13\hbox{$^\circ$ }$](/articles/aa/full_html/2009/19/aa11275-08/img20.png)


Table 5:
Intrinsic polarization of the [OI]6300 emission line and
its nearby continuum.
4 Discussion
The intrinsic polarization of the [OI]6300 emission line
in RY Tauri and that of the nearby continuum
differ significantly.
The significant and distinct polarization
of the [OI] emission indicates that
the scattering geometry of the [OI] photons is different from
that of the continuum photons.
Therefore the detected polarization properties can be
an important clue to clarify the distribution
of [OI] emitting region and the surrounding material.
4.1 [OI]
6300 emitting region and circumstellar structures
The position angle (PA) of the long-axis of the circumstellar disk
around RY Tauri was estimated as
by Kitamura et al. (2002) who presented the radio
mapping observation at 2-mm continuum for the possible circumstellar
disk of RY Tauri.
The velocity gradient at
detected from the CO (J=2-1) emission map
(Koerner & Sargent 1995) supports this estimation.
The H
jet at
and its counter jet, which are perpendicular
to the estimated disk position angle, were
also found by St-Onge & Bastien (2008).
In Fig. 6,
we show the position angles of the disk long-axis and jets,
and those of the [OI] polarization and continuum polarization from
our measurement, projected on the sky.
![]() |
Figure 6:
The [OI] |
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The position angle of the [OI]
polarization was
,
which is almost perpendicular to the disk position angle.
Their difference (
)
was
.
It is also just parallel to the H
jets (
).
Both the perpendicularity and parallelism between the observed polarization
and the surrounding structures suggest that the [OI] polarization is
well correlated with the axisymmetric circumstellar structures in the
RY Tauri system.
The [OI]
6300 emission line in TTSs is generally thought to be formed in
the winds above the central region of
the circumstellar disk for LVCs and
in highly collimated jets on the axis of symmetry of the system for
HVCs.
It seems natural to consider that
the gas in which [OI] photons are emitted is distributed well
axisymmetrically around the central star, as are collimated jets or winds
around the axis of the system, thus these photons are
scattered by the axisymmetric circumstellar structures such as
the disk and envelope.
The continuum polarization showed
position angles between
and
varying with the epoch.
The position angle seems roughly parallel to the disk
position angle (
).
This parallelism between the continuum polarization and the disk long-axis
might indicate that
the surrounding envelope mainly scatters
the continuum photons as
Whitney & Hartmann (1992,1993) indicated
in their light scattering calculations
for young stellar objects with circumstellar scatterers.
However,
the continuum polarization showed slight but significant variation of
polarization within only a few days,
as has often been observed since the pioneering polarimetric
work for this object (Bastien & Landstreet 1979).
The continuum polarization seems to be affected not only by the large
scale structure
such as an envelope but by a rapidly varying circumstellar structure
near the central star as we can see in the daily variation of the polarization.
The scattering geometry of the continuum emission may be actually more complicated.
![]() |
Figure 7: The geometry of the simple light scattering model. |
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![]() |
Figure 8:
The model calculations of linear polarization from a point source on
a jet axis scattered by a flat disk with an inner hole.
Polarization degree
|
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4.2 Comparison with a simple scattering model
The polarization of the [OI]6300 line is expected to reflect the
geometrical configuration of the [OI] emitting regions and
the circumstellar structure which
scatters the [OI] photons.
We try to estimate the position of the [OI] emitting region by
comparing the observed polarization with a simple light
scattering model.
The model geometry is described in Fig. 7.
For simplicity, we considered that the [OI] emission emerges
at a point on the axis of
symmetry of the RY Tauri system;
we assumed that the source is located either on a collimated jet
or within a compact region in the wind near the z-axis.
The system has also an optically thick, geometrically thin
flat disk,
where the incident photons are scattered at a ratio of an
effective albedo
.
The disk has an inner hole with a radius of
,
where
no scattering of the incident photons occurs.
The system is inclined toward the observer at an angle i.
Photons from the [OI] emitting gas at a distance d from the central
star reach the observer either directly or after being scattered by the
disk.
Hence, the observed polarization consists of their composite.
The reference coordinate of polarization is taken so that the apparent
long-axis direction of the disk coincides with the positive Stokes-q direction.
The length scale in the model is measured by a unit of the disk radius
.
The continuum radiation from the central star is not considered here
because we treat only a forbidden line polarization
completely separated from the continuum.
We set the effective albedo of the disk
to 0.5 as a trial.
We applied the scattering phase functions of Rayleigh scattering and
of MRN dust mixtures at
calculated
by White (1979) to take into account the size
distribution of dust particles.
We finally calculated the emerged polarization degree
as a function of an [OI] source distance d for
a number of inclination angles in the range of
with disk inner hole radii of
,
0.001,
and 0.010, and two scattering phase functions.
The results are shown in Fig. 8.
The behavior of the calculated polarization is qualitatively interpreted as below.
At the beginning, we examine the results for Rayleigh scattering.
In the calculations without a disk inner hole (the upper left panel of
Fig. 8),
only positive polarization appears with a peak at a moderate source
distance.
For small source distances, the source strongly illuminates
the central portion of the disk, from which a large amount of
scattered emission emerges.
When we see the inclined disk system projected on the sky,
the apparent centroid of the illuminated portion resides
in the direction of the disk short axis from the source,
thus positive polarization parallel to the disk long-axis
emerges as a whole.
As the source distance increases, the polarization degree of the sum of
scattered light from the whole disk portions increases
because directions of apparent scattering planes of all the scattered
photons tend to converge.
Meanwhile, the flux ratio of polarized scattered light from the disk to the
constant unpolarized direct light from the source falls off with distance
because the solid angle at which the source views the disk gets smaller.
The behavior of the model polarization can be explained by compensation
between these two effects.
An increase in polarization with an inclination angle is explained by
the growth of apparent asymmetry of the scattering geometry projected on the sky.
The behavior changes significantly in the case with an inner hole
(the upper panels of Fig. 8,
and 0.010 cases).
Negative polarization appears at small source distances, while
the polarization becomes positive and approaches zero
after a positive peak at larger distances
as well as the results without an inner hole.
For small distances, the scattered light from the annulus region around the inner hole
dominates. As a result, negative polarization perpendicular
to the disk long-axis emerges as a whole.
For large distances, the solution
asymptotically approaches the shape similar to that without an inner hole
because global geometry approximately approaches that without a hole.
In the MRN dust calculations, polarization tends to be smaller
and its peak shifts to smaller source distances
than the Rayleigh scattering calculations because
the MRN dust tends to scatter incident photons into forward
directions effectively.
Now we estimate the [OI]6300 source distance d
applying the observed [OI] polarization and
the other parameters of RY Tauri to the model.
The inclination angle of the disk was estimated as
,
and the disk radius
was as 51 AU
from the 2-mm imaging (Kitamura et al. 2002).
Akeson et al. (2005) performed near infrared interferometry and
estimated the inner disk radius as
AU
applying a ring model for the K-band continuum emitting region.
The observed [OI] polarization perpendicular to the disk long-axis
corresponds to
on the coordinate of the current
model.
The results of calculations for the above parameters and two scattering phase
functions are shown in Fig. 9
with the observed [OI] polarization.
We found some possible ranges of the source distance d
that satisfy both the model and observation.
For the Rayleigh scattering case, the solutions are
0.25-0.51 AU and 0.02-0.06 AU.
For the MRN dust case, the solution is 0.08-0.12 AU, though it is marginal.
Such a precise comparison between
the model calculation and observation, however, seems to be
rarely useful because the model includes parameters with rough
estimation such as an effective albedo
.
On the other hand, irrespective of roughness of these estimations,
the general tendency of the model calculation that
shows negative polarization for small source
distances does not change.
The model calculations show negative polarization with a
substantial amplitude at source distances less than
a few
0.1 AU.
Here, we tentatively conclude that the [OI]
6300 emitting region
resides roughly within a few
0.1 AU from the central star.
Our result is consistent with the general understandings of upper
limits of the [OI]
emitting region.
Hirth et al. (1997) showed that
[OI]
6300 emitting region for TTSs in Taurus cloud
resides within 0.1'' from the central star for LVCs and within
0.2'' for HVCs, which correspond to a few
10 AU or less
in projected distance, by seeing limited long slit spectroscopy.
However, more precise position of the
[OI] emitting region beyond their resolution of 0.1'' or
10 AUs
has not been revealed.
Our result shed light on the issue by the spectropolarimetric approach.
The measured [OI] polarization compared with the light scattering model
indicates that a large amount of an [OI]
6300 line emerges in
a very compact region in either a collimated jet or wind near
the central axis, within a few
0.1 AU of the central star,
and is scattered by a disk with an inner hole in the case of RY Tauri.
4.3 Future prospects
We achieved enough polarimetric accuracy only for an [OI]
6300 line among several FELs. However, polarization measurement of the other FELs emitted at a more distant position from a central star might help us to understand
the polarization properties of FELs.
Hirth et al. (1997) revealed that the spatial offset of [SII]
emitting region of TTSs is 2-4 times larger than that of [OI],
and that of [NII] lines is 1.5-2 times larger than [SII].
These lines are often observed
as more distant jets or Herbig-Haro objects too.
The polarization measurement of such lines for TTSs,
whose emitting distance from
the central star are reasonably well understood by long slit spectroscopy,
will help us to evaluate the scattering models such as those we applied.
![]() |
Figure 9:
Model calculations for RY Tauri
(
|
Open with DEXTER |
Polarization of an FEL that is emitted most distantly from the central star, such as [NII], might also be a reliable indicator of the foreground polarization. The intrinsic polarization of the line is expected to decrease and approach zero as the emitting region departs from the central star because scattered polarized flux decreases relative to the direct unpolarized light from the source as indicated by our model calculations (see Fig. 8). Thus the line shows only the foreground polarization when we measure its polarization. If this is the case, we acquire the powerful, independent method to estimate foreground polarization toward TTSs often difficult to estimate. Such an independent reliable estimation of the foreground polarization, which assigns the correct origin of polarization on a q-u plane, is crucial when we associate observed polarization with the geometry of the system quantitatively by use of intrinsic polarization spectra in the coordinate of polarization degree and position angle.
We detected intrinsic polarization for an [OI]
line
but failed to measure velocity resolved polarization profile because of
insufficient exposure,
despite the sufficient wavelength resolution of the instrument.
The deeper exposure at a wavelength resolution similar to that described
in this work might reveal the polarimetric line profile for FELs.
This enables us to separate the polarization of an LVC
and an HVC, which are thought to have emerged from distinctly different
regions, and gives us clearer information on the
structure of jets and winds.
Polarization of FELs of TTSs are prospective as valuable probes for investigating the geometry of jets and winds near the central star. It is necessary to increase polarimetric measurements of FELs for a number of TTSs and various kinds of lines with deeper exposure.
5 Summary
We performed high-dispersion spectropolarimetry for the T Tauri star
RY Tauri and measured linear polarization in seven forbidden lines
[OI]
5577, 6300, 6364, [NII]
6583,
[SII]
6716, 6731, and [FeII]
7155.
This is the first high-dispersion spectropolarimetric measurement
for forbidden lines in T Tauri stars.
We successfully detected intrinsic polarization in
the [OI]6300 forbidden line.
The intrinsic [OI]
6300 polarization after correction of
the reliable independent estimation of the foreground polarization was
derived as
and
.
The [OI]
6300 polarization apparently differs from
the polarization of the nearby continuum derived as
and
.
The significant intrinsic polarization of [OI]
6300 indicates that
the scattering geometry of [OI]
6300 photons is
different from that of
continuum photons emitted from the photosphere.
The position angle of [OI]6300 polarization is compared with
the circumstellar structures found by the previous studies.
It is nearly perpendicular to the disk long-axis
and parallel to the optical H
jet.
Both the perpendicularity and parallelism potentially
suggest relatively axisymmetric
distribution of the [OI]
6300 emitting region in a jet and/or winds and of
scattering medium such as a disk and an envelope.
We constructed a simplified scattering model with a point source as an [OI]
emitter on a jet axis and a flat disk with an inner hole as a scatterer.
The comparison between the model and observed polarization suggests
that the [OI]
6300 emission emerges close to the central star with
a possible separation of less than a few
0.1 AU.
To clarify the geometry and kinematics of jets and winds of T Tauri stars,
measurement of linear polarization is one valuable method.
However, significant measurement has been limited to only one emission line [OI]6300
for only one object RY Tauri at present.
It is necessary to increase
the number of target T Tauri stars and kinds of forbidden lines
for polarimetric measurements with reliable precision.
Acknowledgements
We are deeply grateful to Dr. R. Hirata for his valuable support and suggestions throughout the development of the spectropolarimeter LIPS and observation. We would like to thank Dr. A. Pickles and all the staff of the UH 2.2-m telescope for their great support among our observation. We also gratefully thank the staff of the Subaru Telescope for their kind support. We thank the referee for sincere comments and suggestions on the manuscript. Use of the UH 2.2-m telescope for the observations is supported by NAOJ. The development of LIPS is supported by the Subaru Telescope R&D Committee.
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Footnotes
- ... IRAF
- IRAF is distributed by the National Optical Astronomy Observatories, which are operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.
All Tables
Table 1: Observation journal of high-dispersion (R=7000) spectropolarimetry for RY Tauri.
Table 2: Observation journal of low-resolution spectropolarimetry of the field stars around RY Tauri.
Table 3: Measured interstellar polarization parameters of the field stars and estimated foreground polarization toward RY Tauri.
Table 4: Measured polarization of forbidden emission lines and their nearby continuum.
Table 5:
Intrinsic polarization of the [OI]6300 emission line and
its nearby continuum.
All Figures
![]() |
Figure 1:
Observed intensity and linear polarization spectra of an [OI]
|
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 2: Intensity profiles of forbidden emission lines. A normalized photospheric spectrum was subtracted from the raw spectrum normalized at continuum level. |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 3:
Interstellar
Polarization map around RY Tauri.
Measured polarization of the field stars (solid lines) and
estimated foreground polarization toward RY Tauri (dashed line) are shown.
The line length indicates the polarization degree at polarization
peak (
|
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 4: The relation between interstellar polarization degree and distance around RY Tauri (open circles). The foreground polarization estimated at the distance of RY Tauri is also shown (filled diamond). |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 5:
Linear polarization of the [OI] |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 6:
The [OI] |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 7: The geometry of the simple light scattering model. |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 8:
The model calculations of linear polarization from a point source on
a jet axis scattered by a flat disk with an inner hole.
Polarization degree
|
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 9:
Model calculations for RY Tauri
(
|
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
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