Coordinated Space and Ground-Based Monitoring of Accretion Bursts in a Protoplanetary Disk: Establishing Mid-Infrared Hydrogen Lines as Accretion Diagnostics for JWST–MIRI

In this paper, we establish and calibrate mid-infrared hydrogen recombination lines observed with JWST as accretion tracers for pre-main-sequence stars that accrete from their circumstellar disks. This work is part of a coordinated, multi-observatory effort that monitored the well-known binary system DQ Tau over three orbital periods, capturing its periodic accretion bursts. In this first paper, we present 9 epochs of MIRI-MRS spectra with near-simultaneous LCO photometry and VLT–X-Shooter spectroscopy. This program caught exceptional accretion variability, spanning almost two orders of magnitude between the peak of the first periastron accretion burst and the following quiescent phases. The MIRI spectra show H I line luminosities that vary in step with the accretion-luminosity time series measured with LCO and X-Shooter. The tight correlation with accretion and the large line widths, now resolved with MIRI, support an accretion-flow origin for mid-infrared H I transitions. Combining these three exceptional datasets, we derive accurate relations between mid-infrared line and accretion luminosities for three H I transitions (10-7, 7-6, 8-7). These new relations equip the community with a direct measurement of the accretion luminosity from MIRI-MRS spectra. A MIRI-derived accretion luminosity is fundamental for time-domain chemistry studies, as well as for studies of accretion in embedded/distant sources that are currently inaccessible in the optical. With these new relations, we provide accretion luminosities for an archival sample of 38 MRS spectra of protoplanetary disks published to date.