Accretion luminosities of young stars from Pf{beta}

Pf{beta} was serendipitously observed in NIRSPEC and CRIRES surveys of CO fundamental emission, amounting to a sample size of 120 young stars with detected Pf{beta} emission. Using a subsample of disks with previously measured accretion luminosities, we show that Pf{beta} line luminosity is well correlated with accretion luminosity over a range of at least three orders of magnitude.

We use this correlation to derive accretion luminosities for all 120 targets, 65 of which are previously unreported in the literature. The conversion from accretion luminosity to accretion rate is limited by the availability of stellar mass and radius measurements; nevertheless, we also report accretion rates for 67 targets, 16 previously unmeasured. Our large sample size and our ability to probe high extinction values allow for relatively unbiased comparisons between different types of disks.