Where Are the M Dwarf Disks Older Than 10 Million Years?

2005/06/07 by Peter Plavchan, M. Jura, Sarah Lipscy +1 · 7 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/432568

published as Astrophys.J. 631 (2005) 1161-1169 · 24 pages, 2 figures, accepted to ApJ

arxiv created 2005/06/07 · openalex publication_date 2005/09/21 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

We present 11.7 μm observations of nine late-type dwarfs obtained at the Keck I 10 m telescope in 2002 December and 2003 April. Our targets were selected for their youth or apparent IRAS 12 μm excess. For all nine sources, excess infrared emission is not detected. We find that stellar wind drag can dominate the circumstellar grain removal and plausibly explain the dearth of M dwarf systems older than 10 Myr with currently detected infrared excesses. We predict that M dwarfs possess fractional infrared excesses on the order of L IR / L * ~ 10 -6 and that this may be detectable with future efforts.

Citations

• Dusty Debris Around Solar-Type Stars: Temporal Disk Evolution

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