A survey of T Tauri stars with AKARI toward the Taurus-Auriga region

Aims: We search new T Tauri star (TTS) candidates with the mid-infrared (MIR) part of the AKARI All-Sky Survey at 9 and 18 um wavelengths. Methods: We used the point source catalogue (PSC), obtained by the Infrared Camera (IRC) on board AKARI. We combined the 2MASS PSC and the 3rd version of the USNO CCD Astrograph Catalogue (UCAC) with the AKARI IRC-PSC, and surveyed 517 known TTSs over a 1800-square-degree part of the Taurus-Auriga region to find criteria to extract TTSs. We considered asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, post-AGB stars, Planetary Nebulae (PNe), and galaxies, which have similar MIR colours, to separate TTSs from these sources. Results: Of the 517 known TTSs, we detected 133 sources with AKARI. Based on the colour-colour and colour-magnitude diagrams made from the AKARI, 2MASS, and UCAC surveys, we propose the criteria to extract TTS candidates from the AKARI All-Sky data. On the basis of our criteria, we selected 176/14725 AKARI sources as TTS candidates which are located around the Taurus-Auriga region. Comparing these sources with SIMBAD, there are 148 previously identified sources including 115 Young Stellar Objects (YSOs), and 28 unidentified sources. Conclusions: Based on SIMBAD identifications, we take the TTS-identification probability using our criteria to be ~75 %. We find 28 TTS candidates, of which we expect 21 to be confirmed once follow-up observations can be obtained. Although the probability of ~75 % is not so high, it is affected by the completeness of the SIMBAD database, and we can search for TTSs over the whole sky, over all star forming regions.
Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in A&A