Protostars and Planets VI, Heidelberg, July 15-20, 2013

Poster 2B074

Near-infrared Emission from Sublimating Dust in Collisionally Active Debris Disks

van Lieshout, Rik (University of Amsterdam)
Dominik, Carsten (University of Amsterdam, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)
Kama, Mihkel (University of Amsterdam)
Michiel, Min (University of Amsterdam)

Abstract:
Hot exozodiacal dust is thought to be responsible for excess near-infrared (NIR) emission emanating from the innermost parts of some debris disks. The origin of this dust, however, is still a matter of debate. We test whether hot exozodiacal dust can be supplied from an exterior parent belt by Poynting-Robertson (P-R) drag, paying special attention to the pile-up of dust that occurs due to the interplay of P-R drag and dust sublimation. Specifically, we investigate whether pile-ups still occur when collisions are taken into account, and if they can explain the observed NIR excess. We compute the steady-state distribution of dust in the inner disk by solving the continuity equation. First, we derive an analytic solution under a number of simplifying assumptions. Second, we develop a numerical debris disk model that for the first time treats the complex interaction of collisions, P-R drag, and sublimation in a self-consistent way. From the resulting dust distributions we generate simple emission spectra and compare these to observed excess NIR fluxes. We confirm that P-R drag always supplies a small amount of dust to the sublimation zone, but find that a fully consistent treatment yields a maximum amount of dust that is about 7 times lower than that given by analytical estimates. The NIR excess due this material is much smaller (<10^-3 for A-type stars with parent belts at >1 AU) than the values derived from interferometric observations (~10^-2). Furthermore, the pile-up of dust still occurs when collisions are considered, but its effect on the NIR flux is insignificant. Finally, the cross-section in the innermost regions is clearly dominated by barely bound grains.

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