Disks Around T Tauri Stars with SPHERE (DARTTS-S) II: Twenty-one new polarimetric images of young stellar disks

Near-IR polarimetric images of protoplanetary disks provide the ability to characterize sub-structures that are potentially due to the interaction with (forming) planets. The available census is, however, strongly biased toward massive disks around old stars. The DARTTS program aims at alleviating this bias by imaging a large number of T Tauri stars with diverse properties. In this work, we present new SPHERE images of 21 circumstellar disks, which is the largest sample of this time yet to be released. The targets of this work are significantly younger than those published thus far with polarimetric NIR imaging. Scattered light is unambiguously resolved in 11 targets while some polarized unresolved signal is detected in 3 additional sources. Some disk sub-structures are detected. However, the paucity of spirals and shadows from this sample reinforces the trend for which these NIR features are associated with Herbig stars, either because older or more massive. Furthermore, disk rings that are apparent in ALMA observations of some targets do not appear to have corresponding detections with SPHERE. Inner cavities larger than 15 au are also absent from our images despite being expected from the SED. On the other hand, 3 objects show extended filaments at larger scale that are indicative of strong interaction with the surrounding medium. All but one of the undetected disks are best explained by their limited size (approximately 20 au) and the high occurrence of stellar companions in these sources suggest an important role in limiting the disk size. One undetected disk is massive and very large at millimeter wavelengths implying it is self-shadowed in the near-IR. This work paves the way towards a more complete and less biased sample of scattered-light observations, which is required to interpret how disk features evolve throughout the disk lifetime.