Related papers: Protoplanetary Disk Science Enabled by Extremely L…
Transitional discs are a special type of protoplanetary discs where planet formation is thought to be taking place. These objects feature characteristic inner cavities and/or gaps of a few tens of AUs in the sub-millimitre images of the…
The discovery of thousands of exoplanets has shown that the birth of planets is a very efficient process in nature. Several physical mechanisms have been proposed to describe the assembly of planets in disks surrounding young stars.…
New images of young stars are revolutionizing our understanding of planet formation. ALMA detects large grains in planet-forming disks with few AU scale resolution and scattered light imaging with extreme adaptive optics systems reveal…
Circumstellar disks are an integral part of the star formation process and the sites where planets are formed. Understanding the physical processes that drive their evolution, as disks evolve from optically thick to optically thin, is…
During the past five years, the Spitzer Space Telescope and improved ground-based facilities have enabled a huge increase in the number of circumstellar disks, around young stars of Solar mass or smaller, in which the composition of the…
Plans for the next generation of optical-infrared telescopes, the Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs), are well advanced. With primary apertures in excess of 20m, they will revolutionise our ground-based capabilities. In this review I…
As we begin to discover rocky planets in the habitable zone of nearby stars with missions like TESS and CHEOPS, we will need quick advancements on instrumentation and observational techniques that will enable us to answer key science…
The ESPRESSO spectrograph at ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) has, since it began science operations in October 2018, revolutionised exoplanet science. The combination of the large VLT mirrors and the high resolution and stability of the…
The crucial initial step in planet formation is the agglomeration of micron-sized dust into macroscopic aggregates. This phase is likely to happen very early during the protostellar disc formation, which is characterised by active gas…
The formation, structure and evolution of protoplanetary discs is considered. The formation of giant planets within the environment of these models is also discussed.
Observations of protoplanetary disks provide information on planet formation and the reasons for the diversity of planetary systems. The key to understanding planet formation is the study of dust evolution from small grains to pebbles.…
Protoplanetary disks are thought to be the birth places of planetary systems. The formation and the subsequent evolution of protoplanetary disks are regulated by the star formation process, which begins with the collapse of a cloud core to…
(abridged) In the core accretion scenario for the formation of planetary rocky cores, the first step toward planet formation is the growth of dust grains into larger and larger aggregates and eventually planetesimals. Although dust grains…
Protoplanetary disks dissipate rapidly after the central star forms, on time-scales comparable to those inferred for planet formation. In order to allow the formation of planets, disks must survive the dispersive effects of UV and X-ray…
Submillimeter observations with ALMA will be the essential next step in our understanding of how stars and planets form. Key projects range from detailed imaging of the collapse of pre-stellar cores and measuring the accretion rate of…
Recent surveys of protoplanetary disks show that substructure in dust thermal continuum emission maps is common in protoplanetary disks. These substructures, most prominently rings and gaps, shape and change the chemical and physical…
Observations of circumstellar disks around stars as a function of stellar properties such as mass, metallicity, multiplicity, and age, provide constraints on theories concerning the formation and evolution of planetary systems. Utilizing…
Accurate measurement of temperature in protoplanetary disks is critical to understanding many key features of disk evolution and planet formation, from disk chemistry and dynamics, to planetesimal formation. This paper explores the…
The initial conditions, physics, and outcome of planet formation are now constrained by detailed observations of protoplanetary disks, laboratory experiments, and the discovery of thousands of extrasolar planetary systems. These…
The last two decades have seen remarkable progress in our long-standing goal of determining the abundance and diversity of worlds in the Galaxy. Understanding of this subject involves tracing the path of interstellar material from dense…