Where Are the M Dwarf Disks Older Than 10 Million Years?

We present 11.7 μm observations of nine late-type dwarfs obtained at the Keck I 10 m telescope in 2002 December and 2003 April. Our targets were selected for their youth or apparent IRAS 12 μm excess. For all nine sources, excess infrared emission is not detected. We find that stellar wind drag can dominate the circumstellar grain removal and plausibly explain the dearth of M dwarf systems older than 10 Myr with currently detected infrared excesses. We predict that M dwarfs possess fractional infrared excesses on the order of LIR/L* ~ 10-6 and that this may be detectable with future efforts.

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