Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Near-Infrared And The Inner Regions Of Protoplanetary Disks, Dejan Vinković, Željko Ivezić, Tomislav Jurkić, Moshe Elitzur

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

We examine the “puffed-up inner disk” model proposed by Dullemond, Dominik, & Natta for explaining the near-IR excess radiation from Herbig Ae/Be stars. Detailed model computations show that the observed near-IR excess requires more hot dust than is contained in the puffed-up disk rim. The rim can produce the observed near-IR excess only if its dust has perfectly gray opacity, but such dust is in conflict with the observed 10 μm spectral feature. We find that a compact (~10 AU), tenuous (τ_V ≲ 0.4), dusty halo around the disk inner regions contains enough dust to readily explain …