Early science with the Large Millimetre Telescope: Deep LMT/AzTEC millimetre observations of ϵ Eridani and its surroundings

ϵ Eridani is a nearby, young Sun-like star that hosts a ring of cool debris analogous to the Solar system's Edgeworth–Kuiper belt. Early observations at (sub-)mm wavelengths gave tentative evidence of the presence of inhomogeneities in the ring, which have been ascribed to the effect of a putative low eccentricity planet, orbiting close to the ring. The existence of these structures has been recently challenged by high-resolution interferometric millimetre observations. Here, we present the deepest single-dish image of ϵ Eridani at millimetre wavelengths, obtained with the Large Millimetre Telescope Alfonso Serrano (LMT). The main goal of these LMT observations is to confirm (or refute) the presence of non-axisymmetric structure in the disc. The dusty ring is detected for the first time along its full projected elliptical shape. The radial extent of the ring is not spatially resolved and shows no evidence, to within the uncertainties, of dust density enhancements. Additional features of the 1.1 mm map are: (i) the presence of significant flux in the gap between the ring and the star, probably providing the first exo-solar evidence of Poynting–Robertson drag, (ii) an unambiguous detection of emission at the stellar position with a flux significantly above that expected from ϵ Eridani's photosphere, and (iii) the identification of numerous unresolved sources which could correspond to background dusty star-forming galaxies.