Observations of Protoplanetary Disk Structures

By S. Andrews. 2020

280 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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 drive those formation processes. Observations of the solids and gas in these disks, particularly at high resolution, provide fundamental insights on their mass distributions, dynamical states, and evolutionary behaviors. Over the past decade, rapid developments in these areas have largely been driven by observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). This review highlights the state of observational research on disk structures, emphasizing three key conclusions that reflect the main branches of the field: (1) Relationships among disk structure properties are also linked to the masses, environments, and evolutionary states of their stellar hosts; (2) There is clear, qualitative evidence for the growth and migration of disk solids, although the implied evolutionary timescales suggest the classical assumption of a smooth gas disk is inappropriate; and (3) Small-scale substructures with a variety of morphologies, locations, scales, and amplitudes -- presumably tracing local gas pressure maxima -- broadly influence the physical and observational properties of disks. The last point especially is reshaping the field, with the recognition that these disk substructures likely trace active sites of planetesimal growth or are the hallmarks of planetary systems at their formation epoch.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/13fd2b1c6829cf411fc41e0c1289e95410b21280

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. D. Wilner
2. S. Andrews
3. T. Birnstiel
4. C. Qi
5. Th. Henning
6. E. Bergin
7. J. Carpenter
8. Andrea Isella

In Instrumentation

1. S. Andrews
2. D. Wilner
3. K. Oberg
4. J. Carpenter
5. Th. Henning
6. C. Qi
7. Andrea Isella
8. R. Teague

Citations in the corpus

• Astrochemistry and compositions of planetary systems (2020, background): “There are several lines of evidence that planet formation is well underway in these disks and they are therefore commonly referred to as protoplanetary disks or planet-forming disks (Williams and Cieza 2011; Andrews et al. 2018; Andrews 2020).”
• Molecules with ALMA at Planet-forming Scales (MAPS). I. Program Overview and Highlights (2021, background): “…is that disks frequently display substructures – rings, gaps, spirals, and clumps – in millimeter continuum emission, tracing the distribution of small pebbles (e.g., ALMA Partnership et al. 2015; Andrews et al. 2016, 2018; Huang et al. 2018a; Long et al. 2018; Andrews 2020; Cieza et al. 2021).”
• A Circumplanetary Disk around PDS70c (2021, background): “Recent surveys have revealed that, almost ubiquitously, protoplanetary disks appear highly structured with rings and gaps, spiral arms, and asymmetries (e.g., Garufi et al. 2018; Andrews 2020).”