Photoevaporation may provide an explanation for the short lifetimes of disks around young stars. With the exception of neutral oxygen lines, the observed low-velocity forbidden line emission from T Tauri stars can be reproduced by photoevaporating models. The natural formation of a gap in the disk at several AU due to photoevaporation and viscous spreading provides a possible halting mechanism for migrating planets and an explanation for the abundance of observed planets at these radii.
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0402655,
title = {Destruction of Stellar Disks by Photoevaporation},
author = {D. Johnstone and I. Matsuyama and I. G. McCarthy and A. S. Font},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0402655},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
4 pages, 5 figures; invited paper to appear in proceedings of 'Bodenheimer Fest'