ALMA Observations of Circumstellar Disks in the Upper Scorpius OB Association

ALMA Observations of Circumstellar Disks in the Upper Scorpius OB Association

Authors:

Barenfeld et al

Abstract:

We present ALMA observations of 106 G-, K-, and M-type stars in the Upper Scorpius OB Association hosting circumstellar disks. With these data, we measure the 0.88 mm continuum and 12CO J=3−2 line fluxes of disks around low mass (0.14−1.66 M⊙) stars at an age of 5-11 Myr. Of the 75 primordial disks in the sample, 53 are detected in the dust continuum and 26 in CO. Of the 31 disks classified as debris/evolved transitional disks, 5 are detected in the continuum and none in CO. The lack of CO emission in approximately half of the disks with detected continuum emission can be explained if CO is optically thick but has a compact emitting area (≲40 AU), or if the CO is heavily depleted by a factor of at least ∼1000 relative to interstellar medium abundances and is optically thin. The continuum measurements are used to estimate the dust mass of the disks. We find a correlation between disk dust mass and stellar host mass consistent with a power-law relation of Mdust∝M1.67±0.37∗. Disk dust masses in Upper Sco are compared to those measured in the younger Taurus star forming region to constrain the evolution of disk dust mass. We find that the difference in the mean of log(Mdust/M∗) between Taurus and Upper Sco is 0.64±0.09, such that Mdust/M∗ is lower in Upper Sco by a factor of ∼4.5.