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Description
The dispersal of protoplanetary disks sets the timescale available for planets to assemble, and thus it is one of the fundamental parameters in theories of planetary formation. Disk dispersal is determined by several properties of the central star, the disk itself, and the surrounding environment. In particular, the metallicity of disks may impact their evolution, even if to date controversial results exist: in low-metallicity clusters disks seem to rapidly disperse, while in the Magellanic Clouds some evidence supports the existence of accreting disks few tens of Myrs old. In this paper we study the dispersal timescale of disks in Dolidze 25, the young cluster in proximity of the Sun with lowest metallicity, with the aim of understanding whether disk evolution is impacted by the low-metallicity of the cluster. We have analyzed Chandra/ACIS-I observations of the cluster and combined the resulting source catalog with existing optical and infrared catalogs of the region. We selected the disk-bearing population in a 1 degree circular region centered on Dolidze~25 from criteria based on infrared colors, and the disk-less population within a smaller central region among the X-ray sources with OIR counterpart. In both cases, criteria are applied to discard contaminating sources in the foreground/background. We have derived stellar parameters from isochrones fitted to color-magnitude diagrams. We derived a disk fraction of about 34% and a median age of the cluster of 1.2Myrs. To minimize the impact of incompleteness and spatial inhomogeneity of the list of members, we restricted this calculation to stars in a magnitude range where our selection of cluster members is fairly complete and by adopting different cuts in stellar masses. By comparing this estimate with existing estimates of the disk fraction of clusters younger than 10Myrs, our study suggests that the disk fraction of Dolidze 25 is lower than what is expected from its age alone. Even if our results are not conclusive given the intrinsic uncertainty on stellar ages estimated from isochrones fitting to color-magnitude diagrams, we suggest that disk evolution in Dolidze 25 may be impacted by the environment. Given the poor O star population and low stellar density of the cluster, it is more likely that disks dispersal timescale is dictated more by the low metallicity of the cluster rather than external photoevaporation or dynamical encounters.
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