Related papers: An Observational Perspective of Transitional Disks

Context.Transition disks are believed to be the final stages of protoplanetary disks, during which a forming planetary system or photoevaporation processes open a gap in the inner disk, drastically changing the disk structure. From…

Transitional disks are protoplanetary disk around young stars that display inner holes in the dust distribution within a few AU, which is accompanied nevertheless by some gas accretion onto the central star. These cavities could possibly be…

Context. Despite the recent discovery of spiral-shaped features in protoplanetary discs in the near-infrared and millimetric wavelengths, there is still an active discussion to understand how they formed. In fact, the spiral waves observed…

Transitional disks are protoplanetary disks characterized by reduced near- and mid-infrared emission with respect to full disks. This characteristic spectral energy distribution indicates the presence of an optically thin inner cavity…

This review chapter for young researchers presents our current understanding of debris discs. It introduces some of their basic properties and observables, and describes how we think they form and collisionally evolve. Special emphasis is…

The study of the last stages of planet formation, also known as debris disks, is fundamental to place constrains on the formation of planetary sized bodies. Debris disks are composed of dust and occasionally small amounts of gas, both…

The formation scenario of a gapped disk, i.e., transitional disk, and its asymmetry is still under debate. Proposed scenarios such as disk-planet interaction, photoevaporation, grain growth, anticyclonic vortex, eccentricity, and their…

The mechanisms of planet formation are still under debate. We know little about how planets form, even if more than 4000 exoplanets have been detected to date. Recent investigations target the cot of newly born planets: the protoplanetary…

Circumstellar disks have long been regarded as windows into planetary systems. The advent of high sensitivity, high resolution imaging in the submillimetre where both the solid and gas components of disks can be detected opens up new…

Among the numerous known extrasolar planets, only a handful have been imaged directly so far, at large orbital radii and in rather evolved systems. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) will have the capacity to observe…

Debris disks are optically thin, almost gas-free dusty disks observed around a significant fraction of main-sequence stars older than about 10 Myr. Since the circumstellar dust is short-lived, the very existence of these disks is considered…

Planets are supposed to form in circumstellar disks. The gravitational potential of a planet perturbs the disk and leads to characteristic structures, i.e. spiral waves and gaps, in the disk's density profile. We perform a large-scale…

Spatially resolved polarized (sub-)mm emission has been observed for example in the protoplanetary disk around HL Tau. Magnetically aligned grains are commonly interpreted as the source of polarization. However, self-scattering by large…

Using Non-Redundant Mask interferometry (NRM), we searched for binary companions to objects previously classified as Transitional Disks (TD). These objects are thought to be an evolutionary stage between an optically thick disk and…

Transition disks are protoplanetary disks with inner cavities possibly cleared by massive companions, which makes them prime targets to observe at high resolution to map their velocity structure. We present ALMA Band 6 dust and gas…

Transitional disks are circumstellar disks with inner holes that in some cases are produced by planets and/or substellar companions in these systems. For this reason, these disks are extremely important for the study of planetary system…

We assume a scenario in which transition discs (i.e. discs around young stars that have signatures of cool dust but lack significant near infra-red emission from warm dust) are associated with the presence of planets (or brown dwarfs).…

The spatial distribution and lifetime of molecular gas in the inner regions of young circumstellar disks are key to understanding the formation of planetary systems. Gas-rich disks are observed to disperse in the first ~10 Myr, and recent…

Observations of protoplanetary disks with high angular resolution using an ALMA interferometer showed that ring-shaped structures are often visible in their images, indicating strong disturbances in the disks. The mechanisms of their…

The physical and chemical conditions in young protoplanetary disks set the boundary conditions for planet formation. Although the dust in disks is relatively easily detected as a far-IR photometric ``excess'' over the expected photospheric…