Exozodiacal Dust Disks
- Not to be confused with debris disks
- Require interferometry to detect
- High levels (100-1000 zodi) even in >100 Myr systems
- Confound the detection of exoEarths
- Probe the structure of inner system
1 AU terrestrial planet with gap
0.5 – 1.5 AU warm dust disk 500K
0.1 – 0.5 AU hot dust disk > 1000K
Center A0 star @ 10 pcc
< 100K
100 AU
100-1400K
< 10 AU
HZ
Our disk is the most luminous object in SS after the Sun.
Earth would be a clump in the zodi at visible and IR [Kelsall+1998]
10-20 zodi would compromise exoEarth detection [Beichman+2006,Roberge+2012]
Interferometric, astrometric, direct, photometric, ...
exoEarth detection becomes challenging if exozodi level is ~20 zodis and clumpy [Defrère+SPIE 2012]
exoEarth detection is divided by factor of 2 for exozodi level increase of 10 [Stark+2014]
10% of Gyr old MS stars may have enough exozodi dust to complicate exoEarth imaging [Kennedy & Wyatt 2013]
Resonant structures could indicate planets indirectly [Wyatt+1999]
Excess incoherent flux from dust creates challenges for design of coronographs and starshades
deck
By Nic Scott
