Related papers: How large is a disk -- what do protoplanetary disk…
The extent of the gas in protoplanetary disks is observed to be universally larger than the extent of the dust. This is often attributed to radial drift and grain growth of the mm grains, but line optical depth produces a similar…
The evolution of protoplanetary disks is dominated by the conservation of angular momentum, where the accretion of material onto the central star is driven by viscous expansion of the outer disk or by disk winds extracting angular momentum…
The size of a disk encodes important information about its evolution. Combining new Submillimeter Array (SMA) observations with archival Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) data, we analyze mm continuum and CO emission line sizes for a…
A key problem in protoplanetary disc evolution is understanding the efficiency of dust radial drift. This process makes the observed dust disc sizes shrink on relatively short timescales, implying that discs started much larger than what we…
It is still unclear whether the evolution of protoplanetary disks, a key ingredient in the theory of planet formation, is driven by viscous turbulence or magnetic disk winds. As viscously evolving disks expand outward over time, the…
We perform a comprehensive demographic study of the CO extent relative to dust of the disk population in the Lupus clouds, in order to find indications of dust evolution and possible correlations with other properties. We increase up to 42…
The gas mass of protoplanetary disks, and the gas-to-dust ratio, are two key elements driving the evolution of these disks and the formation of planetary system. We explore here to what extent CO (or its isotopologues) can be used as a…
Gas mass is a fundamental quantity of protoplanetary disks that directly relates to their ability to form planets. Because we are unable to observe the bulk H$_2$ content of disks directly, we rely on indirect tracers to provide…
CO is the most widely used gas tracer of protoplanetary disks. Its abundance is usually assumed to be an interstellar ratio throughout the warm molecular layer of the disk. But recent observations of low CO gas abundance in many…
The formation of multiple stellar systems is a natural by-product of the star-formation process, and its impact on the properties of protoplanetary discs and on the formation of planets is still to be fully understood. To date, no detailed…
Recent observations show that the CO gas abundance, relative to H$_2$, in many 1-10 Myr old protoplanetary disks may be heavily depleted, by a factor of 10-100 compared to the canonical interstellar medium value of 10$^{-4}$. When and how…
The evolution of the gas mass of planet-forming disks around young stars is crucial for our understanding of planet formation, yet it has proven hard to constrain observationally, due both to the difficulties of measuring gas masses and the…
Recent ALMA surveys of protoplanetary disks have shown that for most disks the extent of the gas emission is greater than the extent of the thermal emission of the millimeter-sized dust. Both line optical depth and the combined effect of…
In this article we review the methods used to determine the gas and dust masses of protoplanetary disks, with an emphasis on the lesser characterized total gas mass. Our review encompasses all the indirect tracers and the methodology that…
We present the first high-resolution sub-mm survey of both dust and gas for a large population of protoplanetary disks. Characterizing fundamental properties of protoplanetary disks on a statistical level is critical to understanding how…
Gas in protostellar disks provides the raw material for giant planet formation and controls the dynamics of the planetesimal-building dust grains. Accurate gas mass measurements help map the observed properties of planet-forming disks onto…
The inward drift of mm-cm sized pebbles in protoplanetary disks has become an important part of our current theories of planet formation and, more recently, planet composition as well. The gas-to-dust size ratio of protoplanetary disks can…
Despite intensive studies of protoplanetary disks, there is still no reliable way to determine their total mass and their surface density distribution, quantities that are crucial for describing both the structure and the evolution of disks…
ALMA observations of protoplanetary disks confirm earlier indications that there is a clear difference between the dust and gas radial extents. The origin of this difference is still debated, with both radial drift of the dust and optical…
The mass of protoplanetary disks is arguably one of their most important quantities shaping their evolution toward planetary systems, but it remains a challenge to determine this quantity. Using the high spatial resolution now available on…