STRUCTURE AND EVOLUTION OF DEBRIS DISKS AROUND F-TYPE STARS. I. OBSERVATIONS, DATABASE, AND BASIC EVOLUTIONARY ASPECTS

Although photometric and spectroscopic surveys with the Spitzer Space Telescope remarkably increased the number of well-studied debris disks around A-type and Sun-like stars, detailed analyses of debris disks around F-type stars remained less frequent. Using the MIPS camera and the Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) spectrograph, we searched for debris dust around 82 F-type stars with Spitzer. We found 27 stars that harbor debris disks, nine of which are new discoveries. The dust distribution around two of our stars, HD 50571 and HD 170773, was found to be marginally extended on the 70 mu m MIPS images. Combining the MIPS and IRS measurements with additional infrared and submillimeter data, we achieved excellent spectral coverage for most of our debris systems. We have modeled the excess emission of 22 debris disks using a single temperature dust ring model and of five debris systems with two-temperature models. The latter systems may contain two dust rings around the star. In accordance with the expected trends, the fractional luminosity of the disks declines with time, exhibiting a decay rate consistent with the range of model predictions. We found the distribution of radial dust distances as a function of age to be consistent with the predictions of both the self-stirred and the planetary-stirred disk evolution models. A more comprehensive investigation of the evolution of debris disks around F-type stars, partly based on the presented data set, will be the subject of an upcoming paper.