UV spectropolarimetry with Polstar: protoplanetary disks
Additional information
Authors
Wisniewski J. P. .,
Berdyugin A. V. .,
Berdyugina S.,
Danchi W. C. .,
Dong R.,
Oudmaijer R. D. .,
Airapetian V. S. .,
Brittain S. D. .,
Gayley K.,
Ignace R.,
Langlois M.,
Lawson K. D. .,
Lomax J. R. .,
Rich E. A. .,
Tamura M.,
Vink J. S. .
Type
Journal Article
Year
2022
Language
English
Abstract
Polstar is a proposed NASA MIDEX mission that carries a high resolutionUV spectropolarimeter capable of measure all four Stokesparameters onboard a 60 cm telescope. The mission has beendesigned to pioneer the field of time-domain UVspectropolarimetry. Time domain UV spectropolarimetry offers thebest resource to determine the geometry and physical conditionsof protoplanetary disks from the stellar surface to <5 AU. Wedetail two key objectives that a dedicated time domain UVspectropolarimetry survey, such as that enabled by Polstar or asimilar mission concept, could achieve: 1) Test the hypothesisthat magneto-accretion operating in young planet-forming disksaround lower-mass stars transitions to boundary layer accretionin planet-forming disks around higher mass stars; and 2)Discriminate whether transient events in the innermost regionsof planet-forming disks of intermediate mass stars are caused byinner disk mis-alignments or from stellar or disk emissions.
Journal
Astrophysics and Space Science
Volume
367
Number
12
Start page number
122-
