We present a JWST MIRI/MRS spectrum of the inner disk of WISE J044634.16–262756.1B (hereafter J0446B), an old (∼34 Myr) M4.5 star but with hints of ongoing accretion. The spectrum is molecule-rich and dominated by hydrocarbons. We detect 14 molecular species (H2, CH3, CH4, C2H2, 13CCH2, C2H4, C2H6, C3H4, C4H2, C6H6, HCN, HC3N, CO2, and 13CO2) and two atomic lines ([Ne ii] and [Ar ii]), all observed for the first time in a disk at this age. The detection of spatially unresolved H2 and Ne gas strongly supports that J0446B hosts a long-lived primordial disk, rather than a debris disk. The marginal H2O detection and the high C2H2/CO2 column density ratio indicate that the inner disk of J0446B has a very carbon-rich chemistry, with a gas-phase C/O ratio ≳2, consistent with what has been found in most primordial disks around similarly low-mass stars. In the absence of significant outer disk dust substructures, inner disks are expected to first become water-rich due to the rapid inward drift of icy pebbles and evolve into carbon-rich as outer disk gas flows inward on longer timescales. The faint millimeter emission in such low-mass star disks implies that they may have depleted their outer icy pebble reservoir early and already passed the water-rich phase. Models with pebble drift and volatile transport suggest that maintaining a carbon-rich chemistry for tens of Myr likely requires a slowly evolving disk with α-viscosity ≲10−4. This study represents the first detailed characterization of disk gas at ∼30 Myr, strongly motivating further studies into the final stages of disk evolution.
The First JWST View of a 30-Myr-old Protoplanetary Disk Reveals a Late-stage Carbon-rich Phase
- Creators
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Long 龙, Feng 凤1, 2
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Pascucci, Ilaria1
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Houge, Adrien3
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Banzatti, Andrea4
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Pontoppidan, Klaus M.5
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Najita, Joan6
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Krijt, Sebastiaan7
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Xie, Chengyan1
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Williams, Joe7
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Herczeg 沈, Gregory J. 雷歌8
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Andrews, Sean M.9
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Bergin, Edwin10
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Blake, Geoffrey A.11
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Colmenares, María José10
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Harsono, Daniel12
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Romero-Mirza, Carlos E.9
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Li 李, Rixin 日新13, 14
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Lu, Cicero X.15
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Pinilla, Paola16
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Wilner, David J.9
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Vioque, Miguel17
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Zhang, Ke18
- JDISCS collaboration
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1.
University of Arizona
- 2. NASA Hubble Fellowship Program Sagan Fellow.
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3.
University of Copenhagen
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4.
Texas State University
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5.
Jet Propulsion Lab
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6.
NOIRLab
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7.
University of Exeter
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8.
Peking University
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9.
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
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10.
University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
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11.
California Institute of Technology
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12.
National Tsing Hua University
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13.
University of California, Berkeley
- 14. Pegasi b Fellow.
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15.
Gemini North Observatory
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16.
University College London
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17.
European Southern Observatory
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18.
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Abstract
Copyright and License
© 2025. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Acknowledgement
We thank the referee for careful reading of the manuscript and helpful suggestions. F.L. thanks Luca Matra for helpful discussions. Support for F.L. was provided by NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant #HST-HF2-51512.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. A.B., K.P., C.X., and I.P. are partially supported by STScI grant #JWST-GO-03153.001-A. A portion of this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). D.H. is supported by a Center for Informatics and Computation in Astronomy (CICA) grant and grant number 110J0353I9 from the Ministry of Education of Taiwan. D.H. also acknowledges support from the National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan (grants NSTC111-2112-M-007-014-MY3, NSTC113-2639-M-A49-002-ASP, and NSTC113-2112-M-007-027). P.P. acknowledges funding from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government's Horizon Europe funding guarantee from ERC (under grant agreement No. 101076489). G.J.H. is supported by grant IS23020 from the Beijing Natural Science Foundation.
This work includes observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The JWST data used in this Letter can be found in MAST doi:10.17909/5d5a-es35. This Letter makes use of the following ALMA data: ADS/JAO.ALMA#2021.1.00871.S. ALMA is a partnership of ESO (representing its member states), NSF (USA) and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada), MOST and ASIAA (Taiwan), and KASI (Republic of Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO and NAOJ. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.
Facilities
JWST - James Webb Space Telescope (MIRI), ALMA - Atacama Large Millimeter Array.
Software References
chemcomp (A. D. Schneider & B. Bitsch 2021), iris (version v2, C. E. Munoz-Romero et al. 2023), dynesty (J. S. Speagle 2020).
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Additional details
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- HST-HF2-51512.001-A
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NAS5-26555
- Space Telescope Science Institute
- JWST-GO-03153.001-A
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NM0018D0004
- Ministry of Education
- 110J0353I9
- National Science and Technology Council
- NSTC111-2112-M-007-014-MY3
- National Science and Technology Council
- NSTC113-2639-M-A49-002-ASP
- National Science and Technology Council
- NSTC113-2112-M-007-027
- UK Research and Innovation
- European Research Council
- 101076489
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- IS23020
- Accepted
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2024-11-22Accepted
- Available
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2025-01-06Published
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences
- Publication Status
- Published