Formation and Evolution of Planetary Systems: Upper Limits to the Gas Mass in Disks around Sun-like Stars

Abstract

We have carried out a sensitive search for gas emission lines at IR and millimeter wavelengths for a sample of 15 young Sun-like stars selected from our dust disk survey with Spitzer. We have used mid-IR lines to trace the warm (300-100 K) gas in the inner disk and millimeter transitions of ^(12)CO to probe the cold (~20 K) outer disk. We report no gas line detections from our sample. Line flux upper limits are first converted to warm and cold gas mass limits using simple approximations allowing a direct comparison with values from the literature. We also present results from more sophisticated models following Gorti & Hollenbach that confirm and extend our simple analysis. These models show that the [S I] 25.23 μm line can set constraining limits on the gas surface density at the disk inner radius and traces disk regions up to a few AU. We find that none of the 15 systems have more than 0.04M_J of gas within a few AU from the disk inner radius for disk radii from 1 to ~40 AU. These gas mass upper limits even in the eight systems younger than ~30 Myr suggest that most of the gas is dispersed early. The gas mass upper limits in the 10-40 AU region, which is mainly traced by our CO data, are <2 M_⊕. If these systems are analogs of the solar system, they either have already formed Uranus- and Neptune-like planets or will not form them beyond 100 Myr. Finally, the gas surface density upper limits at 1 AU are smaller than 0.01% of the minimum mass solar nebula for most of the sources. If terrestrial planets form frequently and their orbits are circularized by gas, then circularization occurs early.

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