Improving Planet Detection with Disk Modeling: Keck/NIRC2 Imaging of the HD 34282 Single-armed Protoplanetary Disk

Abstract

Formed in protoplanetary disks around young stars, giant planets can leave observational features such as spirals and gaps in their natal disks through planet-disk interactions. Although such features can indicate the existence of giant planets, protoplanetary disk signals can overwhelm the innate luminosity of planets. Therefore, in order to image planets that are embedded in disks, it is necessary to remove the contamination from the disks to reveal the planets possibly hiding within their natal environments. We observe and directly model the detected disk in the Keck/NIRC2 vortex coronagraph L -band observations of the single-armed protoplanetary disk around HD 34282. Despite a non-detection of companions for HD 34282, this direct disk modeling improves planet detection sensitivity by up to a factor of 2 in flux ratio and ∼10 M Jupiter in mass. This suggests that performing disk modeling can improve directly imaged planet detection limits in systems with visible scattered light disks, and can help to better constrain the occurrence rates of self-luminous planets in these systems.

The Appearance of Vortices in Protoplanetary Disks in Near-Infrared Scattered Light

“…Both features have been seen in scattered light observations of the HD 34282 disk (Fig. 7), which has a one-armed spiral with a shadowed region on the outside (de Boer et al 2021;Quiroz et al 2021). The HD 34282 disk also harbors a mm continuum emission clump at roughly the same location as the one-armed spiral (left panel in Fig.…”

“…7 we compare the SPHERE NIR scattered light image of the disk with our model image at the same viewing angle. A one-armed spiral (feature B1 in de Boer et al 2021;Quiroz et al 2021) has been identified in the HD 34282 disk. The feature appears similar to the vortex in our model.…”