Modeling the X-ray Irradiation of the LkCa 15 Protoplanetary Disk Using XMM-Newton Archival Data
Abstract
A giant protoplanet has been detected orbiting the nearby T Tauri star LkCa 15 using IR masked aperture techniques. The protoplanet (LkCa 15b) orbits within the dust-depleted inner region of a circumstellar disk at a projected separation of ~16 AU from the central star. The star itself is quite young (age ~2 Myr) making this system an excellent laboratory for studying the earliest stages of exoplanet formation. We detected LkCa 15 as a bright X-ray source in a short 9.8 ks Chandra observation during 2009. More recently, we obtained a deeper follow-up X-ray observation of LkCa 15 in 2014 with XMM-Newton providing a higher quality spectrum. We propose here to analyze the XMM-Newton data and use the derived spectral parameters along with known disk properties to model the X-ray heating and ionization of the LkCa 15 disk and to determine the gas-to-dust ratio (G/D) along the line-of-sight through the disk. X-ray heating and ionization affect the thermal and chemical structure in the disk and, along with the G/D ratio, are crucial parameters needed to determine physical conditions in the inner disk and construct realistic planet formation models. We are requesting ADAP funding to support the analysis and publication of this valuable XMM-Newton data set, which is now in the public archive.
- Publication:
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NASA ADAP Proposal
- Pub Date:
- 2015
- Bibcode:
- 2015adap.prop...67S