Science Highlights
Early Planet Formation in Embedded Disks (eDisk). XIV. Flared Dust Distribution and Viscous Accretion Heating of the Disk around R CrA IRS 7B-a
With the ALMA large program eDisk, we identified hot dust disks around a number of protostars. One of such objects, R Cr A IRS 7B-a, exhibits a peak brightness temperature of ~200 K (Figure 1a). With our radiative transfer modeling, we realized that such a high dust brightness temperature cannot be realized with the heating from the central protostar only (Figure 1c). Including the viscous accretion heating in the disk, we can reproduce the observed brightness temperature of the dust disk (Figure 1b). In other words, those protostellar disks are self-luminous, in sharp contrast to the disks around more evolved Class II sources. Significant mass accretion event must be present in the protostellar disks.