Dust Rings and Cavities in the Protoplanetary Disks around HD 163296 and DoAr 44

We model substructure in the protoplanetary disks around DoAr 44 and HD 163296 in order to better understand the conditions under which planets may form. We match archival millimeter-wavelength thermal emission against models of the disks’ structure that are in radiation balance with the starlight heating and in vertical hydrostatic equilibrium, and then compare to archival polarized scattered near-infrared images of the disks. The millimeter emission arises in the interior, while the scattered near-infrared radiation probes the disks’ outer layers. Our best model of the HD 163296 disk has dust masses 81 ± 13 M⊕ in the inner ring at 68 au and 82+26 −16 M⊕ in the outer ring at 102 au, both falling within the range of estimates from previous studies. Our DoAr 44 model has total dust mass 84+7.0 −3.5 M⊕. Unlike HD 163296, DoAr 44 as of yet has no detected planets. If the central cavity in the DoAr 44 disk is caused by a planet, the planet’s mass must be at least 0.5 MJ and is unlikely to be greater than 1.6 MJ . We demonstrate that the DoAr 44 disk’s structure with a bright ring offset within a fainter skirt can be formed by dust particles drifting through a plausible distribution of gas.