Code of conduct

Upload instructions

What is exoplanet-talks.org?

News

The Atacama Large (sub-)Millimeter Array (ALMA) has driven a revolution in detecting and characterizing substructure indicative of planet-disk interactions across a large sample of protoplanetary disks. In parallel, another ALMA-driven revolution has been taking place: high spatial and spectral resolution observations of molecular species have allowed for an unprecedented view of the dynamical structure of these planet forming disks. Most excitingly, these observations are revealing localized deviations in the velocity field which are attributed to embedded protoplanets. In this talk I will review the significant progress we have made in extracting kinematical information from inteferometric observations, including three dimensional velocity profiles measured at the meters per second level, which have allowed us to directly observe meridional flows, the large cascades of gas falling onto a young, still forming planet embedded in a gas rich disk. Such observations demonstrate that we can now trace the delivery of molecular gas from the disk to the planetary atmosphere. I will further discuss the substantial improvements made in detecting localized perturbations in the gas velocity structure which are believed to be evidence of embedded planets too deeply embedded to be detected at shorter wavelengths. By tracing such disturbances at a variety of heights in the protoplanetary disk and through multiple molecular tracers, we will be able to characterize the embedded planets to an exceptional degree, measuring their mass and cataloging the chemical complexity of their formation environment. I will conclude with an outlook for using ALMA at a planet detection instrument. High resolution observations of molecular gas allow for not only the detection of deeply embedded planets, but also the characterization of the formation environment, both dynamically and chemically.

Richard Teague: Kinematical Detection and Characterizing of Protoplanets with ALMA