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Description
EX Lup is a well-studied T Tauri star that represents the prototype of young eruptive stars EXors. These are characterized by repetitive outbursts due to enhanced accretion from the circumstellar disk onto the star. In this paper we analyze new adaptive optics imaging and spectroscopic observations to study EX Lup and its circumstellar environment in near-infrared in its quiescent phase. We aim at providing a comprehensive understanding of the circumstellar environment around EX Lup in quiescence that builds upon the vast literature data. We observed EX Lup in quiescence with the high contrast imager SPHERE/IRDIS in the dual-beam polarimetric imaging mode to resolve the circumstellar environment in near-infrared scattered light. We complemented these data with earlier SINFONI spectroscopy, also taken in quiescence. Results.We resolve for the first time in scattered light a compact feature around EX Lup azimuthally extending from ~280{deg} to ~360{deg}, and radially extending from 0.3" to 0.55" in the plane of the disk. We explore two different scenarios for the detected emission. The first one accounts for the emission as coming from the brightened walls of the cavity excavated by the outflow whose presence was suggested by ALMA observations in the J=3-2 line of ^12^CO. The second one accounts for the emission as coming from an inclined disk. In this latter case we detect for the first time a more extended circumstellar disk in scattered light, which shows that a region between 10 and 30au is depleted of um-size grains. We compare the J-, H- and K- band spectra obtained with SINFONI in quiescence with the spectra taken during the outburst, showing that all the emission lines were due to the episodic accretion event. Based on the morphology analysis we favour the scenario in which the scattered light is coming from a circumstellar disk rather than the outflow around EX Lup. We analyze the origin of the observed feature either as coming from a continuous circumstellar disk with a cavity, or from the illuminated wall of the outer disk or from a shadowed disk. Moreover, we discuss what is the origin of the m-size grains depleted region, exploring the possibility that a sub-stellar companion may be the cause of it.
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