Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Tight Relation Between Spiral Arm Pitch Angle And Protplanetary Disk Mass, Si-Yue Yu, Luis C. Ho, Zhaohuan Zhu

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

We use two-dimensional Fourier transformation to measure the pitch angle () of the dominant spiral Fourier mode of well-defined spiral arms in 13 protoplanetary disks, making use of near-infrared scattered-light images of AB Aur, SAO 206462, MWC 758, V1247 Ori, HD 142527, DZ Cha, LkHα 330, and HD 100453, and ALMA millimeter continuum images of Elias 2-27, IM Lup, AS 205, and HT Lup. We find that the measured pitch angle correlates strongly with disk mass (M D ), such that more massive protoplanetary disks have smaller pitch angles, following . Interestingly, four disks with a known companion (HD 142527, …