| dc.description.abstract | We present the complete sample of protoplanetary disks from the Gemini- Large Imaging with the Gemini Planet
Imager Herbig/T Tauri Survey, which observed bright Herbig Ae/Be stars and T Tauri stars in near-infrared
polarized light to search for signatures of disk evolution and ongoing planet formation. The 44 targets were chosen
based on their near- and mid-infrared colors, with roughly equal numbers of transitional, pre-transitional, and full
disks. Our approach explicitly did not favor well-known, “famous” disks or those observed by the Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array, resulting in a less-biased sample suitable to probe the major stages of disk
evolution during planet formation. Our optimized data reduction allowed polarized flux as low as 0.002% of the
stellar light to be detected, and we report polarized scattered light around 80% of our targets. We detected pointlike
companions for 47% of the targets, including three brown dwarfs (two confirmed, one new), and a new super-
Jupiter-mass candidate around V1295 Aql. We searched for correlations between the polarized flux and system
parameters, finding a few clear trends: the presence of a companion drastically reduces the polarized flux levels,
far-IR excess correlates with polarized flux for nonbinary systems, and systems hosting disks with ring structures
have stellar masses <3Me. Our sample also included four hot, dusty “FS CMa” systems, and we detected largescale
( >100 au) scattered light around each, signs of extreme youth for these enigmatic systems. Science-ready
images are publicly available through multiple distribution channels using a new FITS file standard that has been
jointly developed with members of the Very Large Telescope Spectro-polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet
Research team. | |
