Studying the innermost AU of YSO accretion disks with VLTI spectro-interferometry
Kraus, Stefan
Proceedings for "The Universe under the Microscope" (AHAR 2008)
held in Bad Honnef (Germany) in April 2008
Journal of Physics: Conference Series by Institute of Physics Publishing
R. Schoedel, A. Eckart, S. Pfalzner, and E. Ros (eds.)
Journal of Physics, Vol.131, pg.012020 (2008)
Abstract
Accretion and outflow processes are of fundamental importance for our understanding of the formation of stars and planetary systems. Until recently, the innermost AU around young stars, where these processes are believed
to take place, were not accessible to optical and infrared imaging observations. Therefore, most conclusions on the spatial distribution of the circumstellar dust and gas were drawn entirely based on the modeling of the
spectral energy distribution and the fitting of line profiles. Here I present some recent investigations in which we employed ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer to spatially resolve the inner disk regions around
several Herbig Ae/Be stars. In one study, we combined, for the first time, near- and mid-infrared interferometry on a Herbig star, which allows us to constrain not only the disk geometry, but also its radial disk
temperature law, revealing the presence of hot gas inside of the dust sublimation radius. In the second study, we used the spectro-interferometric capabilities of the VLTI/AMBER instrument to investigate the spatial
origin of the Brγ hydrogen line emission, finding evidence both for mass infall and mass outflow.
You can get this publication ...