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Dust entrainment in photoevaporative winds: Synthetic observations of transition disks

X-ray- and extreme-ultraviolet- (XEUV-) driven photoevaporative winds acting on protoplanetary disks around young T-Tauri stars may strongly impact disk evolution, affecting both gas and dust distributions. We compute dust densities for the wind regions of XEUV-irradiated transition disks with gap sizes of 20 and 30 AU, and determine whether they can be observed at wavelengths $0.7 \lesssim λ_\mathrm{obs} [μ\mathrm{m}] \lesssim 1.8$ in scattered and polarised light with current instrumentation. For an XEUV-driven outflow around a $M_* = 0.7 \mathrm{M}_\odot$ T-Tauri star with $L_X = 2 \cdot 10^{30} \mathrm{erg/s}$, we find dust mass-loss rates $\dot{M}_\mathrm{dust} \lesssim 2.0 \cdot 10^{-3} \dot{M}_\mathrm{gas}$, and if we invoke vertical settling, the outflow is quite collimated. The synthesised images exhibit a distinct chimney-like structure. The relative intensity of these chimneys is low, but under optimal conditions, their detection may still be feasible with current instrumentation such as JWST NIRCam and SPHERE IRDIS.