Lee Hartmann et al. 1998 ApJ 495 385 doi:10.1086/305277
Lee Hartmann1, Nuria Calvet1,2, Erik Gullbring1 and Paola D'Alessio3
Show affiliationsUsing 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 M
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
with increasing age t among T Tauri stars. Representing this decline as
tη, we estimate 1.5
η
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
Rγ, η
1.5 corresponds to γ
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 M
, 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.
accretion, accretion disks; circumstellar matter; stars: formation; stars: pre-main sequence
Issue 1 (1998 March 1)
Received 1997 June 23, accepted for publication 1997 October 9
Lee Hartmann et al. 1998 ApJ 495 385
David Charbonneau et al. 2005 ApJ 626 523
Shigeru Ida and D. N. C. Lin 2004 ApJ 616 567
Peter Bodenheimer et al. 2003 ApJ 592 555
E. I. Chiang and N. Murray 2002 ApJ 576 473
Hidekazu Tanaka and William R. Ward 2004 ApJ 602 388
A. Burrows et al. 1997 ApJ 491 856
David Charbonneau et al. 2002 ApJ 568 377
S. Ida and D. N. C. Lin 2004 ApJ 604 388
R. Paul Butler et al. 2004 ApJ 617 580