We present the complete sample of protoplanetary disks from the Gemini- Large Imaging with GPI
Herbig/T-tauri Survey (Gemini-LIGHTS) which observed bright Herbig Ae/Be stars and T-Tauri stars
in near-infrared polarized light to search for signatures of disk evolution and ongoing planet formation.
The 44 targets were chosen based on ...
We present the complete sample of protoplanetary disks from the Gemini- Large Imaging with GPI
Herbig/T-tauri Survey (Gemini-LIGHTS) which observed bright Herbig Ae/Be stars and T-Tauri stars
in near-infrared polarized light to search for signatures of disk evolution and ongoing planet formation.
The 44 targets were chosen based on their near- and mid-infrared colors, with roughly equal numbers
of transitional, pre-transitional, and full disks. Our approach explicitly did not favor well-known,
“famous” disks or those observed by ALMA, resulting in a less-biased sample suitable to probe the
major stages of disk evolution during planet formation. Our optimized data reduction allowed polarized
flux as low as 0.002% of the stellar light to be detected, and we report polarized scattered light around
80% of our targets. We detected point-like companions for 47% of the targets, including 3 brown
dwarfs (2 confirmed, 1 new), and a new super-Jupiter mass candidate around V1295 Aql. We searched
for correlations between the polarized flux and system parameters, finding a few clear trends: presence
of a companion drastically reduces the polarized flux levels, far-IR excess correlates with polarized flux
for non-binary systems, and systems hosting disks with ring structures have stellar masses < 3 M .
Our sample also included four hot, dusty “FS CMa” systems and we detected large-scale (> 100 au)
scattered light around each, signs of extreme youth for these enigmatic systems. Science-ready images
are publicly available through multiple distribution channels using a new FITS file standard jointly
developed with members of the VLT/SPHERE team.