Free Floating Gas Giant OTS44 has a Circum Planetary Disk

First millimeter detection of the disk around a young, isolated, planetary-mass object

Authors:

Bayo et al

Abstract:

OTS44 is one of only four free-floating planets known to have a disk. We have previously shown that it is the coolest and least massive known free-floating planet (∼12 MJup) with a substantial disk that is actively accreting. We have obtained Band 6 (233 GHz) ALMA continuum data of this very young disk-bearing object. The data shows a clear unresolved detection of the source. We obtained disk-mass estimates via empirical correlations derived for young, higher-mass, central (substellar) objects. The range of values obtained are between 0.07 and 0.63 M⊕ (dust masses). We compare the properties of this unique disk with those recently reported around higher-mass (brown dwarfs) young objects in order to infer constraints on its mechanism of formation. While extreme assumptions on dust temperature yield disk-mass values that could slightly diverge from the general trends found for more massive brown dwarfs, a range of sensible values provide disk masses compatible with a unique scaling relation between Mdust and M∗ through the substellar domain down to planetary masses.