Outflow Driven by a Protoplanet Embedded in the TW Hya Disk

Abstract

Abstract Gas giant planets are formed by gas accretion onto planetary cores in protoplanetary disks. However, direct evidence of this process is still lacking, limiting our understanding of planetary formation processes. During mass accretion, planet-driven outflows may be launched, which could be observable by shock tracers such as sulfur monoxide (SO). We report the detection of SO gas in the protoplanetary disk around TW Hya in archival Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations. The SO J = 87 − 76 emission line is detected at a 6σ significance and localized to the southeast region of the disk with an arc-like morphology. The line center is redshifted with respect to the systemic velocity by ∼5 km s−1. The starting point of the SO emission is located at a planet-carved dust gap at 42 au. We attribute this to an outflow driven by an embedded protoplanet. Indeed, the observed morphology is well reproduced by a ballistic outflow model. The outflow velocity suggests that the outflow launching source has a mass of ∼4M ⊕ and the mass-loss rate is 3 × 10−8–1 × 10−6 M Jup yr−1. With the relation of mass-loss and mass-accretion rates established for protostars, we estimated the mass-accretion rate onto the protoplanet to be 3 × 10−7−1 × 10−5 M Jup yr−1, which matches theoretical predictions for a ∼4M ⊕ planet at this separation. The detection of planet-driven outflow provides us a unique opportunity to directly probe the earliest phase of gas giant planet formation.