Herschel PACS observations and modeling of debris disks in the Tucana-Horologium association

The Astrophysical Journal 753.2 (2013): 147 reproduced by permission of the AASWe present Herschel PACS photometry of 17 B- to M-type stars in the 30Myr old Tucana-Horologium Association. This work is part of the Herschel Open Time Key Programme "Gas in Protoplanetary Systems". 6 of the 17 targets were found to have infrared excesses significantly greater than the expected stellar IR fluxes, including a previously unknown disk around HD30051. These six debris disks were fitted with single-temperature blackbody models to estimate the temperatures and abundances of the dust in the systems. For the five stars that show excess emission in the Herschel PACS photometry and also have Spitzer IRS spectra, we fit the data with models of optically thin debris disks with realistic grain properties in order to better estimate the disk parameters. The model is determined by a set of six parameters: surface density index, grain size distribution index, minimum and maximum grain sizes, and the inner and outer radii of the disk. The best-fitting parameters give us constraints on the geometry of the dust in these systems, as well as lower limits to the total dust masses. The HD105 disk was further constrained by fitting marginally resolved PACS 70 μm imaging.Support for this work was provided by NASA through an award issued by JPL/Caltech. J.C.A. thanks the PNP-CNES and the French National Research Agency (ANR) for financial support through contract ANR-2010 BLAN-0505-01 (EXOZODI)