arXiv subjects

Clément Baruteau

Publications and source records attributed to Clément Baruteau.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Reflex instabilities I: Boundaries makes grid-based disc simulations frame-dependent

If the mass distribution within an accretion disc is asymmetric, it will exert a gravitational pull on its central object. The central object must then move away from the origin of the reference frame, resulting in atypical gravitational pulls on the disc. The goal of the present series of papers is to investigate the stability of this feedback loop. In this first paper, we report a surprising finding: the choice of reference frame affects the number and nature of the waves and instabilities contained in the analytical equations. To show this, we use a simple example: the modes discovered by Sanchez et al. (2025, Appendix A.3). We provide the first analytical description of those modes, we explain their physical mechanism, and propose to call them 'bracket modes' because they arise from the bracket side of an integration by parts. We show that the same disc can be stable in the stellocentric reference frame but unstable in the barycentric reference frame. This is because the boundaries of the simulation domain are frame-dependent. To avoid this, one must model the entire disc all the way from the central cavity to the outer edge. But this is prohibitively expensive, and some discs do not have a central cavity anyway. Our results suggest that extreme caution is required when interpreting simulations of asymmetric discs, and that our community may not have the tools to model the reflex motion of the central object yet.

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arXiv2026

Reflex instabilities II: The reflex motion of the central object drives at least seven instabilities in accretion discs

This series of papers studies the stability of accretion discs to the reflex motion of the central object under the gravitational pull of the disc itself. In this second paper, we use linear analysis to reproduce or discover seven distinct instabilities. We outline their defining characteristics and propose a classification. Of the four instabilities that had already been discovered, three are artificial: one does not survive the transition to modern surface density profiles such as power-laws, one is due to the location of the domain's boundaries, and one is due to the use of damping layers near the domain's boundaries. Only the SLING instability of Adams et al. (1989) and the three new 'cavity' instabilities seem capable of affecting accretion discs. All four can be described to a high degree of precision by WKB methods. They may drive eccentricity growth, affect planet migration, create spiral and crescent substructures in the absence of any planet, and boost accretion onto the central object. The issue is that the three artificial instabilities are extremely hard to avoid in simulations, and would bias the same observables. This suggests that our community may not have the tools to model the reflex motion of the central object yet.

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arXiv2026

SPIRou near-infrared spectropolarimetry of the ultra-hot Jupiter KELT-9b: tentative detection of the planet magnetic field

Exoplanetary magnetic fields govern atmospheric escape and circulation but have eluded detection in close-in planets. In the ultra-hot Jupiter KELT-9b, atmospheric dynamo is predicted to generate atmospheric fields of 400--4000 G. We search for the circular polarization in atomic lines that a magnetic field would imprint, through the Zeeman effect, on the transmission spectrum of KELT-9b. We observed three transits with SPIRou at the CFHT, on 07 September 2025 and 03 and 06 July 2026, and applied least squares deconvolution to 1398 atomic lines to map the transit-averaged Stokes $V$ and null spectra against orbital semi-amplitude $K_{\rm p}$ and systemic velocity $v_{\rm sys}$. The 2025 transit shows a Stokes $V$ signature of $V/I_c = 9.3 \times 10^{-5}$ at $K_{\rm p} = 219 \pm 11$ km s$^{-1}$, $v = -34.0 \pm 1.2$ km s$^{-1}$, close to the expected planetary velocity. Its false-alarm probability is $1.9 \times 10^{-4}$, formally a marginal detection. Both 2026 transits are of comparable sensitivity but neither exhibits a signal at that location, setting $3σ$ limits of $4.9$ and $6.0 \times 10^{-5}$; the 2025 amplitude would have been recovered at $4.9σ$ and $4.0σ$. The 2025 signature is robust to the tests we applied to it, but qualifies as a marginal detection at best. Spurious signals of comparable strengths occur elsewhere in our Stokes $V$ and null maps, and we cannot exclude that our marginal detection is excess noise. It is not reproduced ten months later.

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arXiv2026

From spirals to rings: dust dynamics in gravitoturbulent protoplanetary discs after late infall

Substructures appear to be a common trait of all extended protoplanetary discs. They are found notably in discs still surrounded by ambient, possibly infalling material. In this study, we revisit the observational signatures of gravitational instability (GI) in the dust and gas emission of protoplanetary discs. We focus on discs undergoing a short-lived episode of late infall that triggers spirals via GI, in order to investigate the long-term dynamics of millimetre-sized dust. We performed 2D hydrodynamical simulations modelling gas and millimetre-sized dust in a self-gravitating disc, with a simplified treatment of stellar irradiation and infall. Results were post-processed by 3D radiative transfer calculations. During infall, GI sets in and the disc develops a gravitoturbulent state characterised by the continuous formation of spirals. Shortly after infall ends, the millimetre-sized dust remains well coupled to the gas, and the dust emission exhibits large-scale spirals in both near-infrared scattered light and continuum emission. Even long after infall has ceased, two-armed spirals are persistently excited by GI in specific regions of the disc. Their dissipation entails the formation of multiple long-lasting pressure maxima, which can be viewed as vestiges of shocks induced by the spirals. They form persistent dust rings that are more or less axisymmetrical. Consequently, once late infall ends, a massive disc can gradually evolve from a disc with spirals in the continuum into one featuring multiple, potentially lopsided bright rings in the continuum. In near-infrared scattered light, the disc initially displays multiple spirals during infall or shortly after it ceases, before ultimately exhibiting multiple rings. The persistent excitation of spirals implies, however, that the residual line-of-sight velocity, derived from line emission, shows large-scale spirals across the disc.

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arXiv2026

Hydrodynamical Simulations of Resonant Breaking in Multi-Planet Systems via Rebound Migration During Disk Dispersal

This study extends the investigation of rebound outward migration to multi-planet systems near an inner expanding disk cavity driven by stellar X-ray photoevaporation. Using 2D hydrodynamical simulations, we explore how systems of two and three planets that span masses from super-Earths to Jupiters evolve as the disk disperses from the inside out. Our results show that rebound migration can substantially reshape multi-planet architectures in the final stages of disk clearing. Owing to the strong, positive corotation torque exerted onto the planet near the cavity edge, divergent migration of the neighbouring planets can break resonant configurations and trigger dynamical instabilities, producing non-resonant orbits with widened period ratios. However, the outcome depends critically on planet mass and the disk dispersal timescale. In lower-mass disks where cavity expansion is too rapid, rebound migration is suppressed, and systems tend to preserve resonant chains. These findings suggest that the rebound mechanism can provide a compelling pathway to explain the prevalence of widely separated, non-resonant architecture observed in the exoplanet population.

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arXiv2026

Destructuring the disk of AB Aurigae: Dynamics and accretion

In this paper, we present near-IR polarized images of the AB Aur disk at three epochs spanning 3.85 years with SPHERE/IRDIS, as well as Halpha images obtained with SPHERE/ZIMPOL at a single epoch. The purpose of this study is to analyze the dynamics of the entire disk and of the various structures in near-IR polarimetry, and to identify sources of Halpha emission to derive constraints on their mass accretion rate. The dynamical study in the near-IR shows that the disk globally follows Keplerian rotation, but we observe a departure from this behavior at radii smaller than ~60au. At the smallest radius of ~25au, we measure a deviation from Keplerian rotation as large as ~12deg over 3.85 years, demonstrating sub-Keplerian rotation. The two bright spirals within the millimeter cavity have different dynamic trends, and we discuss their possible link with the identified planet candidates. We also discuss the implications of the non-Keplerian behavior, and we posit that it could be related to interactions with multiple protoplanets orbiting out of the disk plane on elliptical orbits. Furthermore, the orbital analysis of the compact sources (labeled f1, f2, and f3) suggests that their orbital planes are significantly inclined with respect to the disk plane by several tens of degrees. The variability of the shadows suggests that they are produced by optically thick regions located within ~60au. For the photometric analysis in Halpha, we derive a flux of about 8.22x10^{-15} erg/s/cm^2 for the entire feature f1, but only 6.46x10^{-16} erg/s/cm^2 at the location of AB Aur b, consistent with non-detection. If f1 were a point source and the accretion remained constant for 1Myr, it would correspond to ~5-20 Jupiter masses according to the magnetospheric accretion model or ~6-10 Jupiter masses according to the boundary layer accretion model.

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arXiv2026

The ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures (ARKS) IX: Gas-driven origin for the continuum arc in the debris disc of HD 121617

Debris discs were long considered to be largely gas-free environments governed by collisional fragmentation, gravitational stirring, and radiative forces. Recent CO detections show that gas is present, but its abundance and origin remain uncertain. The ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures (ARKS) revealed a narrow gas and dust ring in the disc HD 121617 with an asymmetric arc 40% brighter than the rest of the ring. We aim to constrain the total gas mass in HD 121617 assuming the dust arc is produced by hydrodynamical gas-dust interactions. We used the Dusty FARGO-ADSG code, modelling dust as Lagrangian particles, including radiation pressure and dust feedback, and varying the total gas mass. Simulations were compared to observations using radiative transfer. An unstable gas ring creates a size-dependent radial and azimuthal dust trap whose efficiency depends on gas mass. Two models, with 50 and 5 Earth masses of gas, reproduce both the ALMA band 7 arc and the outward offset of the VLT/SPHERE scattered-light ring via gas drag and radiation pressure. We infer a conservative gas-mass range of 2.5 to 250 Earth masses. If the ALMA asymmetry is caused by gas drag, the required gas mass compared with the observed CO implies substantial H2, consistent with primordial gas. HD 121617 would then be a hybrid disc between protoplanetary and debris stages. Since a planet could also create an arc, future observations are needed to distinguish these scenarios.

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arXiv2025

Dust back-reaction on gas around planets modifies the cold thermal torque

A nascent planet in a gas disk experiences radial migration due to the different torques which act on it. It has recently been shown that the torques produced by the gas and dust density variations around a non-accreting low-mass planet, the so-called cold thermal and dust streaming torques, can surpass each of the other torque components. We investigate how the total torque acting on the planet is affected by the presence of dust grains and their aerodynamic back-reaction on gas, while taking into account the cold thermal torque produced by thermal diffusion in the gas component. We perform high-resolution local and global three-dimensional two-fluid simulations within the pressureless-fluid dust approximation using the Fargo3D code. We explore the influence of different dust species parameterized by the Stokes number, focusing on non-accreting protoplanets with masses from one-third the mass of Mars to one Earth mass. The dust feedback has substantial impact on the asymmetry of the cold thermal lobes (which produce the cold thermal torque). However, the total torque is dominated by the dust torque when St $>10^{-2}$. The dust torque becomes more negative over time due to the formation of dust lobes that resemble the cold thermal lobes that form in the gas component. Therefore, the dust streaming torque prevails over the cold thermal torque. On the other hand, when St $\leq10^{-2}$, the dust streaming torque is negligible and thus, the total torque on the planet comes from the gaseous component of the disk. Our results suggest that a planet embedded in a gas-dust disk may experience stagnant migration or inward runaway migration in regions of the protoplanetary disk where the dust is not fully coupled to the gas. However, this behaviour could change in regions with strong dust-gas coupling or in the inner transition region of the disk, where the cold thermal torque may become relevant.

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arXiv2025

Hydrodynamical Simulations of Planet Rebound Migration in Photo-evaporating Disks

This study investigates the orbital migration of a planet located near the truncated edge of protoplanetary disks, induced by X-ray photo-evaporation originating from the central star. The combined effects of turbulent viscous accretion and stellar X-ray photo-evaporation give rise to the formation of a cavity in the central few astronomical units in disks. Once the cavity is formed, the outer disk experiences rapid mass loss and the cavity expands inside out. We have conducted 2D hydrodynamical simulations of planet-disk interaction for various planet masses and disk properties. Our simulations demonstrate that planets up to about Neptune masses experience a strong positive corotation torque along the cavity edge that leads to sustained outward migration -- a phenomenon previously termed {\it rebound} migration. Rebound migration is more favorable in disks with moderate stellar photo-evaporation rates of ${\sim}10^{-8} ~ \rm M_{\odot}\,yr^{-1}$. Saturn-mass planets only experience inward migration due to significant gas depletion in their co-orbital regions. In contrast, Jupiter-mass planets are found to undergo modest outward migration as they cause the residual disk to become eccentric. This work presents the first 2D hydrodynamical simulations that confirm the existence and viability of rebound outward migration during the inside-out clearing in protoplanetary disks.

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arXiv2025

The reflex instability: exponential growth of a large-scale $m=1$ mode in astrophysical discs

We report the finding of a linear, non-axisymmetric, global instability in gas discs around stars, which may be relevant to other astrophysical discs. It takes the form of an $m=1$ mode that grows in the disc density distribution while the star-barycentre distance rises exponentially with a characteristic timescale that is orders of magnitude longer than the orbital period. We present results of hydrodynamical simulations with various codes and numerical methods, using either barycentric or stellocentric reference frames, with or without the disc's self gravity: all simulations consistently show an unstable mode growing exponentially. The instability disappears if, and only if, the reflex motion of the star due to the disc's asymmetry is not taken into account in the simulations. For this reason we refer to this instability as the reflex instability. We identify a feedback loop as a possible origin, whereby the acceleration of the star excites the eccentricity of the disc, yielding an $m=1$ mode in the density distribution which, in turn, pulls the star. The growth timescale of the instability decreases with increasing disc mass and is a few hundred orbits for disc-to-star mass ratios of a few percent. If truly physical, and not due to a numerical artifact that would be common to all the codes we have employed, the reflex instability could have a dramatic impact on protoplanetary discs evolution and planetary formation.

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arXiv2025

The importance of the dynamical corotation torque for the migration of low-mass planets -- 1D analytical prescriptions verified by 2D hydrodynamical simulations

Recent developments suggested that planet formation occurs in regions of the discs with low turbulent viscosity. There, the dynamical corotation torque is thought to play an important role by slowing down type I migration. We aim to provide a simple analytical prescription for the dynamical corotation torque for use in 1D global models of planet formation and evolution, and assess the importance of the dynamical corotation torque for the migration of low-mass planets in low-viscosity discs. We propose simple prescriptions for calculating in 1D the time evolution of the vortensities of the librating and orbit-crossing flows around a low-mass planet, which both enter the analytical expression for the dynamical corotation torque. One of our prescriptions involves a memory timescale for the librating flow, and 2D hydrodynamical simulations of disc-planet interactions are used to assess the memory timescale and validate our model. The orbital evolution of a low-mass planet is calculated by 1D simulations where the dynamical corotation torque features our prescriptions for the vortensities of the librating and orbit-crossing flows, and by 2D hydrodynamical simulations of disc-planet interactions, assuming locally isothermal discs. We find very good agreement between the 1D and 2D simulations for a wide parameter space, whether the dynamical corotation torque slows down or accelerates inward migration. We provide maps showing how much the dynamical corotation torque reduces the classical type I migration torque as a function of planet mass and orbital distance. The reduction is about 50\% for a 10 Earth-mass planet at 10 au in a young disc with surface density profile in $r^{-1/2}$ and alpha viscosity of $10^{-4}$. In discs with low turbulent viscosity, the dynamical corotation torque should be taken into account in global models as it can strongly slow down type I migration.

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arXiv2025

On inertial forces (indirect terms) in problems with a central body

Gravitational systems in astrophysics often comprise a body -- the primary -- that far outweights the others, and which is taken as the centre of the reference frame. A fictitious acceleration, also known as the indirect term, must therefore be added to all other bodies in the system to compensate for the absence of motion of the primary. In this paper, we first stress that there is not one indirect term but as many indirect terms as there are bodies in the system that exert a gravitational pull on the primary. For instance, in the case of a protoplanetary disc with two planets, there are three indirect terms: one arising from the whole disc, and one per planet. We also highlight that the direct and indirect gravitational accelerations should be treated in a balanced way: the indirect term from one body should be applied to the other bodies in the system that feel its direct gravitational acceleration, and only to them. We point to situations where one of those terms is usually neglected however, which may lead to spurious results. These ideas are developed here for star-disc-planets interactions, for which we propose a recipe for the force to be applied onto a migrating planet, but they can easily be generalized to other astrophysical systems.

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arXiv2024

The PLATO Mission

PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) is ESA's M3 mission designed to detect and characterise extrasolar planets and perform asteroseismic monitoring of a large number of stars. PLATO will detect small planets (down to <2 R_(Earth)) around bright stars (<11 mag), including terrestrial planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars. With the complement of radial velocity observations from the ground, planets will be characterised for their radius, mass, and age with high accuracy (5 %, 10 %, 10 % for an Earth-Sun combination respectively). PLATO will provide us with a large-scale catalogue of well-characterised small planets up to intermediate orbital periods, relevant for a meaningful comparison to planet formation theories and to better understand planet evolution. It will make possible comparative exoplanetology to place our Solar System planets in a broader context. In parallel, PLATO will study (host) stars using asteroseismology, allowing us to determine the stellar properties with high accuracy, substantially enhancing our knowledge of stellar structure and evolution. The payload instrument consists of 26 cameras with 12cm aperture each. For at least four years, the mission will perform high-precision photometric measurements. Here we review the science objectives, present PLATO's target samples and fields, provide an overview of expected core science performance as well as a description of the instrument and the mission profile at the beginning of the serial production of the flight cameras. PLATO is scheduled for a launch date end 2026. This overview therefore provides a summary of the mission to the community in preparation of the upcoming operational phases.

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arXiv2024

A far-ultraviolet-driven photoevaporation flow observed in a protoplanetary disk

Most low-mass stars form in stellar clusters that also contain massive stars, which are sources of far-ultraviolet (FUV) radiation. Theoretical models predict that this FUV radiation produces photo-dissociation regions (PDRs) on the surfaces of protoplanetary disks around low-mass stars, impacting planet formation within the disks. We report JWST and Atacama Large Millimetere Array observations of a FUV-irradiated protoplanetary disk in the Orion Nebula. Emission lines are detected from the PDR; modelling their kinematics and excitation allows us to constrain the physical conditions within the gas. We quantify the mass-loss rate induced by the FUV irradiation, finding it is sufficient to remove gas from the disk in less than a million years. This is rapid enough to affect giant planet formation in the disk.

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arXiv2023

AB Aur, a Rosetta stone for studies of planet formation (III): continuum observations at 2 and 7 mm

Observational constraints on dust properties in protoplanetary disks are key to better understanding disks' evolution. We continue our exploration of the protoplanetary disk around AB Aur by characterizing its dust properties. We present ALMA observations at 2.2 mm and VLA observations at 6.8 mm. Together with previous ALMA and NOEMA observations at 0.87 and 1.1 mm, these observations are used to compute global spectral index profiles as well as spectral index maps. On the interpretation side, we present the results of a simple isothermal slab model to help constrain dust properties along the ring of continuum emission. We also present results of dust radiative transfer calculations based on a disc-planet hydrodynamical simulation to explain how the azimuthal contrast ratio of the ring emission varies with millimeter wavelength. The spectral energy distribution and the radial profiles of the spectral index indicate that the radiation from the compact source towards the center is not dominated by dust thermal emission, but most likely by free-free emission originating in the radio jet: it constitutes 93% of the emission at 6.8 mm, and 37% at 0.87 mm. The protoplanetary disk has a typical spectral index of 2.3. We estimate a dust disk mass of 8$\rm \times 10^{-5}$ M$\rm _{\odot}$ which, assuming a mean gas-to-dust ratio of 40, gives a total disk mass of 3.2$\rm \times 10^{-3}$ M$\rm _{\odot}$. The azimuthal contrast ratio of the ring outside the millimeter cavity is smaller at 2.2 mm than at 1.1 mm, in agreement with previous findings. The VLA image shows several knots of $5σ$ emission all along the ring, which are consistent with the ring emission being nearly axisymmetric at that wavelength. The decrease in the azimuthal contrast ratio of the ring emission from 0.87 to 6.8 mm can be explained by a dust-losing decaying vortex at the outer edge of a planet gap.

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arXiv2023

The polarisation properties of the HD 181327 debris ring. Evidence for sub-micron particles from scattered light observations

Polarisation is a powerful remote-sensing tool to study the nature of particles scattering the starlight. It is widely used to characterise interplanetary dust particles in the Solar System and increasingly employed to investigate extrasolar dust in debris discs' systems. We aim to measure the scattering properties of the dust from the debris ring around HD 181327 at near-infrared wavelengths. We obtained high-contrast polarimetric images of HD 181327 in the H band with the SPHERE / IRDIS instrument on the Very Large Telescope (ESO). We complemented them with archival data from HST / NICMOS in the F110W filter reprocessed in the context of the Archival Legacy Investigations of Circumstellar Environments (ALICE) project. We developed a combined forward-modelling framework to simultaneously retrieve the scattering phase function in polarisation and intensity. We detected the debris disc around HD 181327 in polarised light and total intensity. We measured the scattering phase function and the degree of linear polarisation of the dust at 1.6 micron in the birth ring. The maximum polarisation is 23.6% +/- 2.6% and occurs between a scattering angle of 70 deg and 82 deg. We show that compact spherical particles made of a highly refractive and relatively absorbing material in a differential power-law size distribution of exponent $-3.5$ can simultaneously reproduce the polarimetric and total intensity scattering properties of the dust. This type of material cannot be obtained with a mixture of silicates, amorphous carbon, water ice, and porosity, and requires a more refracting component such as iron-bearing minerals. We reveal a striking analogy between the near-infrared polarisation of comets and that of HD 181327. The methodology developed here combining VLT/SPHERE and HST/NICMOS may be applicable in the future to combine the polarimetric capabilities of SPHERE with the sensitivity of JWST.

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arXiv2023

Insight from laboratory measurements on dust in debris discs

Extreme adaptive optics instruments have revealed exquisite details on debris discs, allowing to extract the optical properties of the dust particles such as the phase function, the degree of polarisation and the spectral reflectance. These are three powerful diagnostic tools to understand the physical properties of the dust : the size, shape and composition of the dust particles. This can inform us on the population of parent bodies, also called planetesimals, which generate those particles through collisions. It is however very rare to be able to combine all those three observables for the same system, as this requires different high-contrast imaging techniques to suppress the starlight and reveal the faint scattered light emission from the dust. Due to its brightness, the ring detected around the A-type star HR 4796 is a notable exception, with both unpolarised and polarised images covering near-infrared wavelengths. Here, we show how measurements of dust particles in the laboratory can reproduce the observed near-infrared photo-polarimetric properties of the HR 4796 disc. Experimental characterisation of dust allows to bypass the current limitations of dust models to reproduce simultaneously the phase function, the degree of polarisation and the spectral reflectance.

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arXiv2023

Hydrodynamic modelling of dynamical tides dissipation in Jupiter's interior as revealed by Juno

The Juno spacecraft has acquired exceptionally precise data on Jupiter's gravity field, offering invaluable insights into Jupiter's tidal response, interior structure, and dynamics, establishing crucial constraints. We develop a new model for calculating Jupiter's tidal response based on its latest interior model, while also examining the significance of different dissipation processes for the evolution of its system. We study the dissipation of dynamical tides in Jupiter by thermal, viscous and molecular diffusivities acting on gravito-inertial waves in stably stratified zones and inertial waves in convection ones. We solve the linearised equations for the equilibrium tide. Next, we compute the dynamical tides using linear hydrodynamical simulations based on a spectral method. The Coriolis force is fully taken into account, but the centrifugal effect is neglected. We study the dynamical tides occurring in Jupiter using internal structure models that respect Juno's constraints. We study specifically the dominant quadrupolar tidal components and our focus is on the frequency range that corresponds to the tidal frequencies associated with Jupiter's Galilean satellites. By incorporating the different dissipation mechanisms, we calculate the total dissipation and determine the imaginary part of the tidal Love number. We find a significant frequency dependence in dissipation spectra, indicating a strong relationship between dissipation and forcing frequency. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that, in the chosen parameter regime in which kinematic viscosity, thermal and molecular diffusivities are equal, the dominant mechanism contributing to dissipation is viscosity, exceeding in magnitude both thermal and chemical dissipation. We find that the presence of stably stratified zones plays an important role in explaining the high dissipation observed in Jupiter.

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