Tiny Grains Shining Bright in the Gaps of Herbig Ae Transitional Discs
2019
This work presents a study of two Herbig Ae transitional
discs, Oph IRS 48 and HD 169142; which both have reported rings in their dust density distributions. We use Keck-II/NIRC2
adaptive opticsimaging observations in the L' filter (3.8 micron) to probe the regions of these
discsinwards of ~20AU from the star. We introduce our method for investigating these transitional
discs, which takes a forward modelling approach: making a model of the
disc(using the Monte Carlo radiative transfer code RADMC), convolving it with
point-spread functionsof calibrator stars, and comparing the convolved models with the observational data. The
discsurface density parameters are explored with a Monte Carlo Markov Chain technique. Our analysis recovers emission from both of the
discsinterior to the well known optically thick walls, modelled as a ring of emission at ~15AU in Oph IRS 48, and ~7AU for HD 169142, and identifies asymmetries in both
discs. Given the brightness of the near-symmetric rings compared to the reported companion candidates, we suggest that the reported companion candidates can be interpreted as slightly asymmetric
discemission or illumination.
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