2001ApJ...551..357W

We report mid-infrared ISOCAM observations for a sample of radio continuum sources in the ρ Ophiuchi molecular cloud core with unknown or poorly studied infrared counterparts. These data are combined with existing infrared photometry, including recently published ISOCAM data, for previously studied radio sources to investigate the evolutionary states of 35 radio-emitting young stars in the ρ Oph cloud core. About 50% of the radio stars are found to have class I, flat, or class II spectral energy distributions with near-infrared excesses arising from circumstellar disks. Their radio emission is most likely thermal emission from gas ionized by stellar winds. The remaining radio emitters are young stars with class III spectral energy distributions that lack infrared excesses and circumstellar disks. Their radio emission likely is nonthermal emission from magnetic surface activity. The lack of young stars with weak infrared excesses supports earlier suggestions that disk dissipation is rapid. Class III sources are twice as common as class II sources in this radio-selected sample in comparison with extinction-limited samples, which underscores the importance of radio surveys in obtaining a complete census of young stellar objects. The concentration of diskless class III objects in the high column-density molecular core, and their median age of 0.3 Myr derived from their positions in a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, indicate they are contemporaries of class II objects which include the classical T Tauri stars. It appears that these class III objects have shorter disk survival times than class II objects in the cloud.