Microwave Emission from Spinning Dust in Circumstellar Disks

In the high-density environments of circumstellar disks dust grains are expected to grow to large sizes by coagulation. Somewhat unexpectedly, recent near-IR observations of PAH features from disks around Herbig Ae/Be stars demonstrate that a substantial amount of dust mass in the surface layers of these disks (up to several tens of percent of the local carbon content) can be locked up in small nanometer-sized particles. We investigate the possibility of detecting the electric dipole emission produced by these nanoparticles (sizes ~1 nm) as they spin at thermal rates (tens of GHz) in cold gas. We show that such emission peaks in the microwave range and dominates over the thermal disk emission at ν ≲ 50 GHz typically by a factor of several if ≳5% of the total carbon abundance is locked up in nanoparticles. We test the sensitivity of this prediction to various stellar and disk parameters and show that if the potential contamination of the spinning dust component by the free-free and/or synchrotron emission can be removed, then the best chances of detecting this emission would be in disks with small opacities, having SEDs with steep submillimeter slopes (which minimize thermal disk emission at GHz frequencies). Detection of the spinning dust emission would provide important evidence for the existence, properties, and origin of the population of small dust particles in protoplanetary disks, with possible ramifications for planet formation.