Related papers: Peering through the veil: Investigating protoplane…
Polarized dust emission outside of disks reveal the magnetic field morphology of molecular clouds. Within disks, however, polarized dust emission can arise from very different mechanisms (e.g., self-scattering), and each of them are useful…
In this chapter of the Protostars and Planets VII, we review the breakthrough progress that has been made in the field of high-resolution, high-contrast optical and near-infrared imaging of planet-forming disks. These advancements include…
The envelopes and disks that surround protostars reflect the initial conditions of star and planet formation and govern the assembly of stellar masses. Characterizing these structures requires observations that span the near-infrared to…
Debris disks are tenuous, dust-dominated disks commonly observed around stars over a wide range of ages. Those around main sequence stars are analogous to the Solar System's Kuiper Belt and Zodiacal light. The dust in debris disks is…
Dust constitutes only about one percent of the mass of circumstellar disks, yet it is of crucial importance for the modeling of planet formation, disk chemistry, radiative transfer and observations. The initial growth of dust from…
Discs of gas and dust around Myr-old stars are a by-product of the star formation process and provide the raw material to form planets. Hence, their evolution and dispersal directly impact what type of planets can form and affect the final…
Proto-planetary disc surveys conducted with ALMA are measuring disc radii in multiple star forming regions. The disc radius is a fundamental quantity to diagnose whether discs undergo viscous spreading, discriminating between viscosity or…
Future telescopes will characterize rocky exoplanets in reflected light, revealing their albedo, which depends on surface, cloud, and atmospheric properties. Identifying these features is crucial for assessing habitability. We present…
This paper studies the response of a thin accretion disk to an external radial magnetic field. Our focus is on protoplanetary disks (PPDs), which are exposed during their later evolution to an intense, magnetized wind from the central star.…
The disks that orbit young stars are the essential conduits and reservoirs of material for star and planet formation. Their structures, meaning the spatial variations of the disk physical conditions, reflect the underlying mechanisms that…
We examine the observational consequences of partial gaps being opened by planets in protoplanetary disks. We model the disk using a static alpha-disk model with detailed radiative transfer, parametrizing the shape and size of the partially…
Young giant planets, which are embedded in a circumstellar disk, will significantly perturb the disk density distribution. This effect can potentially be used as an indirect tracer for planets. We investigate the feasibility of observing…
Recent observations demonstrate that misalignments and other out-of-plane structures are common in protoplanetary discs. Many of these have been linked to a central host binary with an orbit that is inclined with respect to the disc. We…
A global evolution picture of protoplanetary disks (PPDs) is key to understanding almost every aspect of planet formation, where standard alpha-disk models have been constantly employed for its simplicity. In the mean time, disk mass loss…
Debris disks are the dust disks found around ~20% of nearby main sequence stars in far-IR surveys. They can be considered as descendants of protoplanetary disks or components of planetary systems, providing valuable information on…
Scattered light images of transition discs in the near-infrared often show non-axisymmetric structures in the form of wide-open spiral arms in addition to their characteristic low-opacity inner gap region. We study self-gravitating discs…
Giant planets embedded in circumstellar discs are expected to open gaps in these discs. We examine the vertical structure of the gap edges. We find that the planet excites spiral arms with significant (Mach number of a half) vertical motion…
Transitional disks represent a short stage of the evolution of circumstellar material. Studies of dust grains in these objects can provide pivotal information on the mechanisms of planet formation. Dissimilarities in the spatial…
The composition and distribution of the gas in a protoplanetary disk plays a key role in shaping the outcome of the planet formation process. Observationally, the recovery of information such as the emission height and brightness…
Transitional circumstellar disks around young stellar objects have a distinctive infrared deficit around 10 microns in their Spectral Energy Distributions (SED), recently measured by the Spitzer Infrared Spectrograph (IRS), suggesting dust…