Kinematics signature of a giant planet in the disk of AS 209

Observations of dust in protoplanetary disks with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) are revealing the existence of substructures such as rings, gaps, and cavities. This morphology is expected to be the outcome of dynamical interaction between the disks and (embedded) planets. However, other mechanisms are able to produce similar dust substructures. A solution to discriminate the gap formation mechanism is to look at the perturbation induced by the planet on the gas surface density and/or the kinematics. In the case of the disk around AS 209, a prominent gap has been reported in the surface density of CO at r ~ 100 au. A further gas gap was identified at r ~ 200 au. Recently, a localized velocity perturbation was reported in the 12CO J = 2−1 emission along with a clump in 13CO J = 2−1 at nearly 200 au and this was interpreted as a gaseous circumplanetary disk. In this paper, we report a new analysis of ALMA archival observations of 12CO and 13CO J = 2−1 in AS 209. We detected a clear kinematics perturbation (kink) in multiple channels and over a wide azimuth range in both datasets. We compared the observed perturbation with a semianalytic model of velocity perturbations due to planet-disk interaction. Based on our analysis, the observed kink is not consistent with a planet at 200 au, as this would require a low gas-disk scale height (<0.05) in contradiction with the previous estimate (h/r ~ 0.118 at r = 100 au). When we fix the disk scale height to 0.118 (at r = 100 au), we find instead that a planet at 100 au induces a kinematics perturbation similar to the one observed. The kink amplitude in the various channels implies a planet mass of 3–5 MJup. Thus, we conclude that a giant proto-planet orbiting at r ~ 100 au is responsible for the large-scale kink as well as for the perturbed dust and gas surface density previously detected. The position angle of the planet is constrained to be between 60° and 100° (east of north). The 200 au gap visible in the 12CO J = 2−1 moment zero map is likely due to density fluctuations induced by the spiral wake. Future observations using the high-contrast imaging technique in the near- and mid-infrared (e.g., with JWST and/or VLT/ERIS) are needed to confirm the presence and position of such a planet.