The disk mass is among the most important input parameter for every planet formation model to determine the number and masses of the planets that can form. We present an ALMA 887 μm survey of the disk population around objects from ∼2 to 0.03 M e in the nearby ∼2 Myr old ChamaeleonI star-forming region. We detect thermal dust emission from 66 out of 93 disks, spatially resolve 34 of them, and identify two disks with large dust cavities of about 45 au in radius. Assuming isothermal and optically thin emission, we convert the 887 μm flux densities into dust disk masses, hereafter M dust . We find that the -* M M dust relation is steeper than linear and of the form M dust ∝(M * )1.3-1.9 , where the range in the power-law index reflects two extremes of the possible relation between the average dust temperature and stellar luminosity. By reanalyzing all millimeter data available for nearby regions in a self-consistent way, we show that the 1-3 Myr old regions of Taurus, Lupus, and ChamaeleonI share the same -* M M dust relation, while the 10 Myr old UpperSco association has a steeper relation. Theoretical models of grain growth, drift, and fragmentation reproduce this trend and suggest that disks are in the fragmentation-limited regime. In this regime millimeter grains will be located closer in around lower-mass stars, a prediction that can be tested with deeper and higher spatial resolution ALMA observations.
Measurements of the mass and age of young stars from their location in the HR diagram are limited by not only the typical observational uncertainties that apply to field stars, but also by large systematic uncertainties related to circumstellar phenomena. In this paper, we analyze flux calibrated optical spectra to measure accurate spectral types and extinctions of 283 nearby T Tauri stars. The primary advances in this paper are (1) the incorportation of a simplistic accretion continuum in optical spectral type and extinction measurements calculated over the full optical wavelength range and (2) the uniform analysis of a large sample of stars, many of which are well known and can serve as benchmarks. Comparisons between the non-accreting TTS photospheric templates and stellar photosphere models are used to derive conversions from spectral type to temperature. Differences between spectral types can be subtle and difficult to discern, especially when accounting for accretion and extinction. The spectral types measured here are mostly consistent with spectral types measured over the past decade. However, our new spectral types are 1-2 subclasses later than literature spectral types for the original members of the TW Hya Association and are discrepant with literature values for some well known members of the Taurus Molecular Cloud. Our extinction measurements are consistent with other optical extinction measurements but are typically 1 mag. lower than near-IR measurements, likely the result of methodological differences and the presence of near-IR excesses in most CTTSs. As an illustration of the impact of accretion, spectral type, and extinction uncertainties on the HR diagrams of young clusters, we find that the resulting luminosity spread of stars in the TW Hya Association is 15-30%. The luminosity spread in the TWA and previously measured for binary stars in Taurus suggests that for a majority of stars, protostellar accretion rates are not large enough to significantly alter the subsequent evolution.
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