Coordinated Space and Ground Monitoring of Accretion Bursts in a Protoplanetary Disk: MIRI and iSHELL observe the long-term modulation of gas within a small inner disk cavity

@misc{hyden2026coordinated,
  title = {{Coordinated Space and Ground Monitoring of Accretion Bursts in a Protoplanetary Disk: MIRI and iSHELL observe the long-term modulation of gas within a small inner disk cavity}},
  author = {Jacob Hyden and Andrea Banzatti and Benjamin M. Tofflemire and Sebastiaan Krijt and Till Kaeufer and Klaus M. Pontoppidan and Carlo F. Manara and Christian Rab and John M. McCaskill and Guillaume Bourdarot and Emma T. Whelan and Joan Najita and Adrien Houge and Adwin Boogert and Catherine Dougados and Myriam Benisty and James Muzerolle Page},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.07253},
  eprint = {2611.07253},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.07253},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Coordinated Space and Ground Monitoring of Accretion Bursts in a Protoplanetary Disk: MIRI and iSHELL observe the long-term modulation of gas within a small inner disk cavity
AU  - Jacob Hyden
AU  - Andrea Banzatti
AU  - Benjamin M. Tofflemire
AU  - Sebastiaan Krijt
AU  - Till Kaeufer
AU  - Klaus M. Pontoppidan
AU  - Carlo F. Manara
AU  - Christian Rab
AU  - John M. McCaskill
AU  - Guillaume Bourdarot
AU  - Emma T. Whelan
AU  - Joan Najita
AU  - Adrien Houge
AU  - Adwin Boogert
AU  - Catherine Dougados
AU  - Myriam Benisty
AU  - James Muzerolle Page
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/11/05
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.07253
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.07253
AB  - DQ Tau is a TTauri eccentric binary with pulsed accretion bursts regulated by its ∼ 16-day orbital period. We have monitored this system with seven instruments from ground and space over 40 days. We present results on molecular gas variability from nine JWST-MIRI and nine IRTF-iSHELL epochs over three sequential accretion bursts with accretion luminosity pulses increasing by factors of ∼ 9-80. A fundamental new measurement from this analysis is the line broadening of CO (from iSHELL) and H_2O (from MIRI) lines, which we use to estimate Keplerian radii and their variability in parallel to the line luminosity. This unprecedented dataset clearly shows that the molecular emission does not react like HI and the 5-μm continuum with each accretion burst: the line luminosity and width of all hot molecular gas tracers decrease over ∼30-35 days, consistent with an emitting region decreasing in temperature and mass as it recedes to larger radii within the ∼ 0.2-0.4 au inner cavity perturbed by the binary. The infrared molecular spectrum of DQ Tau is affected more by disk dynamics then by chemical changes triggered by variable accretion, supporting model expectations for chemical relaxation timescales that are much longer than the duration of these accretion bursts (≫ 10 days). The variability observed in all tracers in this study is consistent with a scenario where gas mass builds up near the disk edge to modulate the burst peak intensity and gas density in the inner cavity every ∼4-5 orbital periods. The origin of this modulation is still unclear.
ER  -