2024A&A...682A..56Z

Context. Multiwavelength dust continuum and polarization observations arising from self-scattering have been used to investigate grain sizes in young disks. However, the likelihood of self-scattering being the polarization mechanism in embedded disks decreases for very highly optically thick disks and makes us reconsider some of the size constraints from polarization, particularly for younger and more massive disks. The 1.3 mm polarized emission detected toward the hot (≳400 K) Class 0 disk IRAS 16293-2422 B has been attributed to self-scattering, with predictions of bare grain sizes between 200 and 2000 µm.
Aims. We aim to investigate the effects of changing the maximum grain sizes in the resultant continuum and continuum polarization fractions from self-scattering for a hot and massive Class 0 disk extracted from numerical simulations of prestellar core collapse and to compare them with IRAS 16293 B observations.
Methods. We compared new and archival dust continuum and polarization observations at high resolution between 1.3 and 18 mm to a set of synthetic models. We developed a new publicly available tool to automate this process called Synthesizer. This tool is an easy-to-use program for generating synthetic observations from numerical simulations.
Results. Optical depths are in the range of 130 to 2 from 1.3 to 18 mm, respectively. Predictions of significant grain growth populations, including a_max = 1000 µm, are comparable to the observations from IRAS 16293 B at all observed wavelengths. The polarization fraction produced by self-scattering reaches a maximum of approximately 0.1% at 1.3 mm for a maximum grain size of 100 µm, which is an order of magnitude lower than the grain size observed toward IRAS 16293 B.
Conclusions. From comparison of the Stokes I fluxes, we conclude that significant grain growth could be present in the young Class 0 disk IRAS 16293 B, particularly in the inner hot region (< 10 au, T > 300 K) where refractory organics evaporate. The polarization produced by self-scattering in our model is not high enough to explain the observations at 1.3 and 7 mm, and such effects as dichroic extinction and polarization reversal of elongated aligned grains remain other possible but untested scenarios.