Poster abstract

The Spectroscopic Signature of FU Orionis
Stacie Powell, Cathie Clarke, Jerome Bouvier, Mike Irwin

Abstract

FU Orionis objects represent a small class of pre-main-sequence stars, originally classified by a large increase in optical brightness of $\sim4$ magnitudes or more due to long periods of rapid accretion in their protoplanetary disks. Planetary migration theories suggest the abundance of hot Jupiters could be considerably higher in pre-main-sequence stars. If an FU Orionis object had such a planet embedded in the disk, this would manifest as time-dependent distortions in the optical line profiles of these objects, sustained over different epochs. Previous observations of FU Ori, the prototype of this class, have shown evidence of periodic variations in the photospheric lines on timescales of a few days. New high-resolution spectra of FU Ori were taken from the SOPHIE \'{e}chelle spectrograph over a series of 21 nights in 2007 and from the HARPS spectrograph over 7 nights in 2010. The analysis of the optical line profiles at each epoch is presented, and compared with the predictions of non-axisymmetric structure arising from the signature of a hot Jupiter embedded in the disk.