Monday, March 15, 2021 at 12:40

https://cuboulder.zoom.us/j/96981439846

Jake Simon, Iowa State

"Accretion and Planet Formation in Protoplanetary Disks"

Abstract:

One of the single most important questions in astrophysics is how planets and planetary systems are born out of their parent protoplanetary disks. With parallel advances in computational astrophysics and observational capabilities, now is the quintessential time for unraveling the mysteries of planet formation. In this talk, I will discuss recent efforts made by my research group to understand the earliest stages of planet formation. I will begin by describing how a new generation of protoplanetary disk dynamics simulations has led to a paradigm shift in disk evolution and how we are using observations with ALMA and forthcoming optical/IR instruments to test and refine this paradigm. I will then discuss theoretical work on the formation of planetesimals within the gas disk environment implied by the observations and how the predicted properties of these planetesimals compare with those observed in the asteroid and Kuiper Belt populations. I will conclude with an outlook for protoplanetary disk and planet formation studies, both from a theoretical and observational perspective.

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