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Catherine Espaillat
NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
& Gemini South Visiting Astronomer
 

"Planet Formation in Dusty Disks Around Young Stars"
 

In their initial stages of formation planets should interact with the accretion disk surrounding the newborn star, clearing the material around themselves and leaving behind an observational signature in the form of clearings in the disk. Stars with inner holes in their disks have been detected and are labeled as transitional objects. A few years ago, Spitzer identified a new class of "pre-transitional disks" which have gaps rather than holes - they have an inner disk, a gap, and an outer disk. In several cases, millimeter imaging has confirmed the cavities in (pre-)transitional disks previously inferred from SED modeling. Infrared variability has also been found to be a common phenomenon in such objects. Physical mechanisms that have been presented to explain disk clearing can be tested with these observations; forming planets emerge as the most likely explanation.