On the steady state collisional evolution of debris disks around M dwarfs

2014/03/31 by Etienne Morey, Étienne Morey, Jean-Francois Lestrade +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Debris #Debris disk #Physics #Planetary system #Planetesimal #Population #Solar System #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.EP

paper · pdf · doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201322567

accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics on 21/feb/2014 ; 10 pages

openalex publication_date 2014/03/31 · arxiv created 2014/04/07 · arxiv updated 2015/06/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Debris disks have been found primarily around intermediate and solar mass stars (spectral types A-K), but rarely around low-mass M-type stars. This scarcity of detections in M star surveys can be confronted with the predictions of the steady state collisional evolution model. First, we determine the parameters of the disk population evolved with this model and fit to the distribution of the fractional dust luminosities measured in the surveys of A- and FGK-type stars observed by the infrared satellite Spitzer. Thus, in our approach, we stipulate that the initial disk mass distribution is bimodal and that only high-mass collisionally-dominated disks are detected. The best determined parameter is the diameter Dc of the largest planetesimals in the collisional cascade of the model, which ranges between 2 and 60 km, consistently for disks around both A- and FGK-type stars. Second, we assume that the same disk population surrounds the M dwarfs that have been the subjects of debris disk searches in the far-infrared with Spitzer and at submillimeter wavelengths with radiotelescopes. We find, in the framework of our study, that this disk population, which has been fit to the AFGK data, is still consistent with the observed lack of disks around M dwarfs with Spitzer.

Citations

• Far‐Infrared Properties of M Dwarfs
• The Structure of the Kuiper Belt: Size Distribution and Radial Extent
• Debris Disk Evolution around A Stars
• Origin of the cataclysmic Late Heavy Bombardment period of the terrestrial planets
• Collisional processes and size distribution in spatially extended debris discs
• Debris Disks around Sun‐like Stars
• Accretion in the Early Kuiper Belt. II. Fragmentation
• A single sub-kilometre Kuiper belt object from a stellar occultation in archival data
• PLANET OCCURRENCE WITHIN 0.25 AU OF SOLAR-TYPE STARS FROM KEPLER
• Discovery of a Large Dust Disk Around the Nearby Star AU Microscopii
• The Occurrence Rate of Small Planets around Small Stars
• NEW DEBRIS DISKS AROUND YOUNG, LOW-MASS STARS DISCOVERED WITH THESPITZER SPACE TELESCOPE
• The Size Distribution of Kuiper Belt Objects
• Evolution of Debris Disks
• A Submillimeter Search of Nearby Young Stars for Cold Dust: Discovery of Debris Disks around Two Low‐Mass Stars
• Origin of the orbital architecture of the giant planets of the Solar System
• Resolved debris discs around A stars in the Herschel DEBRIS survey
• The insignificance of P-R drag in detectable extrasolarplanetesimal belts
• Where Are the M Dwarf Disks Older Than 10 Million Years?
• A revised estimate of the occurrence rate of terrestrial planets in the habitable zones around kepler m-dwarfs
• Search for cold debris disks around M-dwarfs