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arXiv · 1703.05338

On the origin of the spiral morphology in the Elias 2-27 circumstellar disc

Farzana Meru·Attila Juhasz·John D. Ilee·Cathie J. Clarke·Giovanni P. Rosotti·Richard A. Booth
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Abstract

The young star Elias 2-27 has recently been observed to posses a massive circumstellar disc with two prominent large-scale spiral arms. In this Letter we perform three-dimensional Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics simulations, radiative transfer modelling, synthetic ALMA imaging and an unsharped masking technique to explore three possibilities for the origin of the observed structures -- an undetected companion either internal or external to the spirals, and a self-gravitating disc. We find that a gravitationally unstable disc and a disc with an external companion can produce morphology that is consistent with the observations. In addition, for the latter, we find that the companion could be a relatively massive planetary mass companion (less than approximately 10 - 13 MJup) and located at large radial distances (between approximately 300 - 700 au). We therefore suggest that Elias 2-27 may be one of the first detections of a disc undergoing gravitational instabilities, or a disc that has recently undergone fragmentation to produce a massive companion.

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Farzana Meru, Attila Juhasz, John D. Ilee, Cathie J. Clarke, Giovanni P. Rosotti, Richard A. Booth. 2017-03-15. On the origin of the spiral morphology in the Elias 2-27 circumstellar disc. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aa6837

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