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Accretion and the Evolution of T Tauri Disks

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Lee Hartmann1, Nuria Calvet1,2, Erik Gullbring1 and Paola D'Alessio3

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Using results and calibrations from a previous paper (Gullbring et al. 1997), we estimate disk accretion rates for pre-main-sequence stars in the Taurus and Chamaeleon I molecular cloud complexes. The median accretion rate for T Tauri stars of age ~1 Myr is ~10-8 Msun yr-1; the intrinsic scatter at a given age may be as large as 1 order of magnitude. There is a clear decline of mass accretion rates dot M with increasing age t among T Tauri stars. Representing this decline as dot M vprop tη, we estimate 1.5 lesssim η lesssim 2.8; the large uncertainty is due to the wide range of accretion rates at a given age, the limited age range of the sample, and errors in estimating stellar ages and accretion luminosities. Adopting values of η near the low end of this range, which are more likely given probable errors and the neglect of birthline age corrections, masses accreted during the T Tauri phase are roughly consistent with disk masses estimated from millimeter-wave dust emission. Similarity solutions for evolving, expanding disks are used to investigate observational constraints on disk properties employing a minimum of parameters. For an assumed power-law form of the disk viscosity with radius ν vprop Rγ, η gtrsim 1.5 corresponds to γ gtrsim 1. The limit γ ~ 1 corresponds to a roughly constant "α" in the Shakura-Sunyaev (1973) viscosity parameterization; using current observed disk sizes, we estimate α ~ 10-2 (on scales ~10-100 AU). Much of the observed variation in mass accretion rates can be accounted for by varying initial disk masses between 0.01 and 0.2 Msun, but this result may be strongly affected by the presence of binary companion stars. These results emphasize the need for older samples of stars for studying disk evolution.


Subject headings

accretion, accretion disks; circumstellar matter; stars: formation; stars: pre-main sequence


Dates

Issue 1 (1998 March 1)

Received 1997 June 23, accepted for publication 1997 October 9



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