Mass, gas, and Gauss around a T Tauri Star with SPIRou

Studies of young planets help us understand planet evolution and investigate important evolutionary processes such as atmospheric escape. We monitored IRAS 04125+2902, a 3 Myr-old T Tauri star with a transiting planet and a transitional disk, with the SPIRou infrared spectropolarimeter on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Using these data, we constrained the mass and density of the Jupiter-size companion to < 0.16 M♃ and < 0.23 g cm−3, respectively (90% upper limits). These rule out a Jovian-like object and support the hypothesis that it is an ancestor to the numerous sub-Neptunes found around mature stars. We unambiguously detected magnetic fields at the stellar surface, small-scale fields reaching 1.5 kG and the large-scale field mostly consisting of a 0.80−0.95 kG dipole inclined by 5−15° to the rotation axis. Accretion onto the star is low and/or episodic at a maximum rate of ≃10−11 M⊙ yr−1, indicating that IRAS 04125+2902 is most likely in a magnetic “propeller” regime, presumably explaining the star’s slow rotation (11.3 d). We discovered persistent Doppler-shifted absorption in a metastable He I line, clear evidence for a magnetized wind from a gaseous inner disk. Variability in absorption suggests structure in the disk wind that could reflect disk-planet interactions.