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N. Peretto (UJF, Grenoble), F. Menard (CFHT), J.-L. Monin (LAOG, Obs. de Grenoble)
Classical T Tauri stars are thought to be surrounded by accretion disks. These disks, often not resolved, are traced in large parts by the thermal emission of the dust they contain. This dust, especially the small particles, polarises the starlight in the optical and near-infrared in a fashion that depends on the scattering geometry. Numerical simulations show that unresolved aperture linear polarimetry can be used to extract information about the geometry of the scattering medium. We previously suggested (Monin, Ménard, Duchêne 1998) that polarimetry could be used to trace the relative orientation of disks in young binary systems in order to shed light on the stellar and planet formation processes. In this contribution we report VLT/FORS optical imaging linear polarisation measurement of 20 binaries spanning a range of separations: 0.5" < sep. < 7". Our results are presented and compared with random distributions. We find that, in general, the linear polarisation vectors of individual stars in the binary systems we studied tend to be parallel to each other. These findings are in agreement with those of, e.g., Donar et al. (1999); Jensen et al. (2000); Wolf et al. (2001). Our results are discussed in the context of disk stability and planet formation.