Constraining the Lifetime of Circumstellar Disks in the Terrestrial Planet Zone: A Mid-IR Survey of the 30-Myr-old Tucana-Horologium Association

Abstract

We have conducted an N-band survey of 14 young stars in the ~30 Myr-old Tucana-Horologium Association to search for evidence of warm, circumstellar dust disks. Using the MIRAC-BLINC camera on the Magellan I (Baade) 6.5-m telescope, we find that none of the stars have a statistically significant N-band excess compared to the predicted stellar photospheric flux. Using three different sets of assumptions, this null result rules out the existence of the following around these post-T Tauri stars: (a) optically-thick disks with inner hole radii of ~<0.1 AU, (b) optically-thin disks with masses of >10^{-6} M_Earth (in ~1-micron-sized grains) within ~<10 AU of these stars, (c) scaled-up analogs of the solar system zodiacal dust cloud with >4000X the emitting area. Our survey was sensitive to dust disks in the terrestrial planet zone with fractional luminosity of log(L_{dust}/L_{star}) ~ 10^{-2.9}, yet none were found. Combined with results from previous surveys, these data suggest that circumstellar dust disks become so optically-thin as to be undetectable at N-band before age ~20 Myr. We also present N-band photometry for several members of other young associations and a subsample of targets that will be observed with Spitzer Space Telescope by the Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems (FEPS) Legacy Science Program. Lastly, we present an absolute calibration of MIRAC-BLINC for four filters (L, N, 11.6, and Q_s) on the Cohen-Walker-Witteborn system.