A primordial origin for the gas-rich debris disks around intermediate-mass stars

Abstract

While most debris disks consist of dust with little or no gas, a fraction have significant amounts of gas detected via emission lines of CO, ionized carbon, and/or atomic oxygen. Almost all such gaseous debris disks known are around A-type stars with ages up to 50 Myr. We show, using semianalytic disk evolution modeling, that this can be understood if the gaseous debris disks are remnant protoplanetary disks that have become depleted of small grains compared to the interstellar medium. Photoelectric heating by the A stars’ far-UV (FUV) radiation is then inefficient, while the stars’ extreme-UV (EUV) and X-ray emissions are weak owing to a lack of surface convective zones capable of driving magnetic activity. In this picture, it is relatively difficult for stars outside the range of spectral types from A through early B to have such long-lived gas disks. Less-massive stars have stronger magnetic activity in the chromosphere, transition region, and corona with resulting EUV and X-ray emission, while more-massive stars have photospheres hot enough to produce strong EUV radiation. In both cases, primordial disk gas is likely to photoevaporate well before 50 Myr. These results come from 0D disk evolution models where we incorporate internal accretion stresses, MHD winds, and photoevaporation by EUV and X-ray photons with luminosities that are functions of the stellar mass and age. A key issue this work leaves open is how some disks become depleted in small dust so that FUV photoevaporation slows. Candidates include the grains’ growth, settling, radial drift, radiation force, and incorporation into planetary systems.