ISPY-NACO Imaging Survey for Planets around Young stars The demographics of forming planets embedded in protoplanetary disks by Gabriele Cugno et al. on Wednesday 30 November

We present the statistical analysis of a subsample of 45 young stars

surrounded by protoplanetary disks (PPDs). This is the largest imaging survey

uniquely focused on PPDs to date. Our goal is to search for young forming

companions embedded in the disk material and to constrain their occurrence rate

in relation to the formation mechanism. We used principal component analysis

based point spread function subtraction techniques to reveal young companions

forming in the disks. We calculated detection limits for our datasets and

adopted a black-body model to derive temperature upper limits of potential

forming planets. We then used Monte Carlo simulations to constrain the

population of forming gas giant companions and compare our results to different

types of formation scenarios. Our data revealed a new binary system (HD38120)

and a recently identified triple system with a brown dwarf companion orbiting a

binary system (HD101412), in addition to 12 known companions. Furthermore, we

detected signals from 17 disks, two of which (HD72106 and TCrA) were imaged for

the first time. We reached median detection limits of L =15.4 mag at 2.0

arcsec, which were used to investigate the temperature of potentially embedded

forming companions. We can constrain the occurrence of forming planets with

semi-major axis a in [20 - 500] au and Teff in [600 - 3000] K, in line with the

statistical results obtained for more evolved systems from other direct imaging

surveys. The NaCo-ISPY data confirm that massive bright planets accreting at

high rates are rare. More powerful instruments with better sensitivity in the

near- to mid-infrared are likely required to unveil the wealth of forming

planets sculpting the observed disk substructures.

arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/http://arxiv.org/abs/2211.15434v1