Please join us for this week’s Astronomy Colloquium, given by Dr. Uma Gorti (NASA Ames/SETI). The title of her talk is The Evolution of Gas and Dust in Protoplanetary Disks
Protoplanetary disks, as the name implies, form planetary systems within their short lifetimes of a few million years. Understanding how the disk material evolves in time and space is central to our understanding of planetary system formation, with the physical and chemical conditions in the protoplanetary disk affecting not only formation processes, but also planetary compositions and dynamical evolution. In this talk, I will discuss disk evolution mainly from a theoretical perspective. I will describe recent models that consider photoevaporation, or the driving of thermal winds due to stellar heating, as the chief agent of disk dispersal. I will also discuss observational constraints on some of the key physical processes, including gas and dust diagnostics from optical to sub-millimeter wavelengths.
