Stellar Flyby Analysis for Spiral Arm Hosts with Gaia DR3

Abstract

Scattered-light imaging studies have detected nearly two dozen spiral arm systems in circumstellar disks, yet the formation mechanisms for most of them are still under debate. Although existing studies can use motion measurements to distinguish leading mechanisms such as planet–disk interaction and disk self-gravity, close-in stellar flybys can induce short-lived spirals and even excite arm-driving planets into highly eccentric orbits. With unprecedented stellar location and proper-motion measurements from Gaia Data Release 3 (DR3), here we study for known spiral arm systems their flyby history with their stellar neighbors by formulating an analytical on-sky flyby framework. For stellar neighbors currently located within 10 pc of the spiral hosts, we restrict the flyby time to within the past 104 yr and the flyby distance to within 10 times the disk extent in scattered light. Among a total of 12,570 neighbors that are identified in Gaia DR3 for 20 spiral systems, we do not identify credible flyby candidates for isolated systems. Our analysis suggests that a close-in recent flyby is not the dominant formation mechanism for isolated spiral systems in scattered light.