Since the dawn of mankind, people have asked fundamental questions such as how did our home, the Earth, come into place and whether we are or not alone in the Universe. Now, science is able to start addressing such questions, by observing planets around stars different than our Sun and by directly observing the process of planet formation as it happens. Such studies are able to deeply affect the perception of our place in the Universe.
Planet formation is a widespread by-product of the process of star formation itself and occurs within relatively thin and dense protostellar discs made of gas and dust that orbit the newborn star. Such discs can now be probed with unprecedented detail thanks to high-resolution telescopes and instruments, such as the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) at sub-millimeter wavelengths or the SPHERE instrument at the Very large telescope (VLT) in the near-infrared, which are both capable of probing nearby star formation regions with a spatial resolution of a few astronomical units. Such new observations are literally revolutionizing our understanding of such discs. We now know that their geometry can be quite complex, characterized by substructures such as rings and gaps, spirals, crescent-like features, mysterious shadows. All such features require a proper understanding from a physical and dynamic point of view. In addition, the long-term processes that lead to the evolution of the disc: viscous accretion, planet formation, photoevaporation, are now being all reconsidered in terms of timescales and their effects on disc properties.
The overall aim of this project is to strengthen the collaboration of groups located in Europe, USA, Chile and Australia - many of them already collaborating actively - in order to (1) develop and use suitable numerical algorithms and techniques to address key unsolved issues related to the interaction of newborn planets with the gas and dust environment in which they are born and (2) to compare such models with the most advanced observations of protostellar discs, obtained with high-resolution telescopes in the IR and sub-mm.
