Precise determination of circumstellar disk lifetimes: Disk evolution in a single star-forming region
This work deals with the determination of disc lifetimes, as previous estimates have been quite uncertain or biased in certain ways (e.g. combining stellar clusters at different distances to us). We employed a novel approach using the number of discs and sources per stellar cluster by modelling it as a Bernoulli process. We tested this model with different ways of detecting discs around young stellar objects (colour-colour diagrams, spectral energy distribution fitting, comparison to the literature), various prior choices in the inference, and different sets of stellar ages. Overall, we find that our model provides a more accurate estimate of disc lifetimes compared to previous methods. Our results suggest that the lifetime of a protoplanetary disc might be up to twice as long as previously thought.