Circumstellar Dust Disks in Taurus‐Auriga: The Submillimeter Perspective

We present a sensitive, multiwavelength submillimeter continuum survey of 153 young stellar objects in the Taurus-Auriga star formation region. The submillimeter detection rate is 61 % to a completeness limit of ∼10mJy (3-σ) at 850 µm. The inferred circumstellar disk masses are log-normally distributed with a mean mass of ∼ 5 ×10 −3 M ⊙ and a large dispersion (0.5 dex). Roughly one third of the submillimeter sources have disk masses larger than the minimal nebula from which the solar system formed. The median disk to star mass ratio is 0.5%. The empirical behavior of the submillimeter continuum is best described as Fν ∝ ν 2.0±0.5 between 350 µm and 1.3 mm, which we argue is due to the combined effects of the…