Possible Molecular Spiral Arms in the Protoplanetary Disk of AB Aur

The circumstellar dust disk of the Herbig Ae star AB Aur has been found to exhibit complex spiral-like structures in the near-IR image obtained with the Subaru Telescope. We present maps of the disk in both CO (3-2) and dust continuum at 345 GHz with the SMA at an angular resolution of 1 .0 × 0.7(144AU × 100AU). The continuum emission traces a dust disk with a central depression and a maximum overall dimension of 450AU (FWHM). This dust disk exhibits several distinct peaks that appear to coincide with bright features in the near-IR image, in particular the brightest inner spiral arm. The CO emission traces a rotating gas disk of size 530AU × 330AU with a deprojected maximum velocity of 2.8 km s at 450 AU. In contrast to the dust disk, the gas disk exhibits an intensity peak at the stellar position. Furthermore, the CO emission in several velocity channels traces the innermost spiral arm seen in the near-IR. We compare the observed spatial-kinematic structure of the CO emission to a simple model of a disk in Keplerian rotation, and find that only the emission tracing the main spiral arm clearly lies outside the confines of our model. This emission has a net outward radial motion compared with the radial velocity predicted by the model at the location of the main spiral arms. The disk of AB Aur is therefore quite different from the Keplerian disks seen around many Herbig Ae stars. The spirallike structures of the disk with non-Keplerian motions we revealed in CO(3-2), together with the central depression of the dust disk, may be explained to be driven by the possible existence of a giant planet forming in the disk. Institute of Astronomy, National Tsing Hua University, 101, Section 2 Kuang Fu Road, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, P.O. Box 23-141, Taipei 106, Taiwan Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA National Astronomical Observatories of Japan, Osawa 2-21-1, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588, Japan