Dusty debris disks that orbit main sequence stars are comparable to our Solar System's Kuiper belt. While debris disks have less gas than their younger counterparts, a surprising discovery by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is that many of these debris disks do in fact have substantial reservoirs of molecular gas. This project combines archival ALMA CO observations of 3 out of the 22 currently known gas-bearing debris disks with recent $\\it{Gaia}$ data that provide precise stellar distances and accurately measures the dynamical mass of the $\\sim$40 Myr old A1V star 49 Ceti. Such a dynamical mass measurement involves parameterizing the disk's physical properties, including its Keplerian rotation curve, using Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods to fit models to the data. We report host star masses and uncertainties, and find disagreement with the photometric and spectroscopic estimates. Such a disagreement may warrant new understanding of stellar evolutionary models for $\\ge\\,$10 Myr-old, isolated systems such as this one. Although, further refinement of the 49 Ceti model and substantial evidence of similar discrepancies amongst other evolved, gas-bearing debris disks is necessary to support this claim.
"},{"label":"Degree","value":["Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors"]},{"label":"Author-supplied Keywords","value":["Debris disks"]},{"label":"Administrative Note","value":"Drupal Node ID: 33866