Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PROTOPLANETS (Establishing a global observational view of the early stages of planet formation and evolution)
Reporting period: 2022-01-01 to 2023-06-30
It is a fundamental problem for our society, as it lies at the heart of the question of the origin of life – replaced in the context of our own solar system, the formation and evolution of giant planets like Jupiter at early stages have a direct impact on the subsequent formation of terrestrial planets and the onset of life.
The main objective of PROTOPLANETS is to establish a global observational picture of the early stages of planetary systems formation and evolution. By searching for protoplanets and studying their imprint on their birth environments, we can constrain the processes happening while planets form.
- Search for protoplanets embedded in disks as observed in direct imaging and through their impact on the disk kinematics
- Characterize protoplanets properties through the modelling of kinematical deviations with a semi-analytical approach
- Understand the physico-chemical conditions in disks shaped by giant planets
- Study the gas dynamics in the immediate vicinity of a planet and its chemical evolution
- Understand the evolution of dust grains in protoplanetary disks shaped by planets
In addition, team members wrote observing proposals to study the chemical conditions in a disk that host a protoplanet candidate to probe the spirals induced by giant planets close to the disk midplane, to look at the conditions for planet formation in crowded and irradiated star forming regions, to understand the origin of substructures observed in disks, to understand the impact of the environment on planet formation and to constrain the structure of the terrestrial planet formation regions when shaped by giant planets.
Main results are:
- Detection of a protoplanet candidate
- Characterization of 40 protoplanetary disks, their dust properties and report on non-detection limits
- Physico-chemical characterization of disk hosting two giant planets
- Accepted JWST program for Cycle 2 to search for protoplanets in disks