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Recorded talk for the UK exoplanet meeting 2021.
Over the last years, ALMA has characterized at unprecedented detail circumstellar discs leading to two major results. First, protoplanetary discs are rich in substructures in the form of gaps and narrow rings, suggesting the presence of planets shaping the dust distribution. These narrow rings concentrate enough dust mass to trigger planetesimal formation at 10s au and the birth of debris discs. However, the second surprising result is that debris discs are much wider than assumed before. Their average fractional width is 70%, almost four times wider than protoplanetary rings. In this talk, I will present two hypotheses that could explain why debris discs are wider than the narrow protoplanetary rings in which they are formed. On one hand, wide debris discs could be made of multiple rings which we have only been able to resolve in a handful of cases. On the other hand, debris discs could be born wide if the narrow rings in which they form migrate with time. The observed width distribution of debris discs would then provide unique constraints on the evolution of substructures in protoplanetary disks. Future high-resolution observations of a large sample of debris discs could confirm or rule out these hypotheses.

Radial structure of exoKuiper belts - UKEXOM21