UV spectropolarimetry with Polstar: protoplanetary disks
Abstract
Polstar is a proposed NASA MIDEX mission that carries a high resolution UV spectropolarimeter capable of measure all four Stokes parameters onboard a 60 cm telescope. The mission has been designed to pioneer the field of time-domain UV spectropolarimetry. Time domain UV spectropolarimetry offers the best resource to determine the geometry and physical conditions of protoplanetary disks from the stellar surface to <5 AU. We detail two key objectives that a dedicated time domain UV spectropolarimetry survey, such as that enabled by Polstar or a similar mission concept, could achieve: 1) Test the hypothesis that magneto-accretion operating in young planet-forming disks around lower-mass stars transitions to boundary layer accretion in planet-forming disks around higher mass stars; and 2) Discriminate whether transient events in the innermost regions of planet-forming disks of intermediate mass stars are caused by inner disk mis-alignments or from stellar or disk emissions.
- Publication:
-
Astrophysics and Space Science
- Pub Date:
- December 2022
- DOI:
- 10.1007/s10509-022-04125-7
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2111.06891
- Bibcode:
- 2022Ap&SS.367..122W
- Keywords:
-
- Ultraviolet astronomy (1736);
- Ultraviolet telescopes (1743);
- Space telescopes (1547);
- Spectropolarimetry(1973);
- Protoplanetary disks (1300);
- Circumstellar matter (241);
- Circumstellar disks (235);
- Exoplanet formation (492);
- Instruments: Polstar;
- NASA: MIDEX;
- Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics;
- Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics;
- Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 16 pages, 7 figures