The ability of protoplanetary disks to form planets depends on the evolution of their bulk (dust) mass reservoir. Surveys of nearby star-forming regions have revealed that there is a time dependence on the disk dust mass. These regions, however, tend to be deficient in massive stars, and are thus not necessarily representative of the birthplaces of the average planetary system.
In different parts in the Orion molecular clouds, observations have shown that external irradiation by nearby O-type stars causes rapid disk destruction. However, the speed of this process and the ongoing nature of star formation in places like the Trapezium cluster and NGC 2024 make it difficult to quantify mass loss as a function of FUV irradiation directly. Small sample sizes compound this problem.
On this poster, we discuss a study of FUV-driven mass loss in the less dense, less-irradiated neighborhoods of (much more common) B-type stars in L1641 and L1647. We use the large-number statistics made possible by the biggest (N=873) disk sample at millimeter-continuum wavelengths to date, the Survey of Orion Disks with ALMA (SODA). These data allow us to zoom in on environments with FUV radiation fields between 10 - 100 G_0, where we identify a consistent trend of mass loss with irradiation, of a factor 2 by 1 Myr on average. We discuss the underlying physics and implications of this process.