UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Colloquium
Zhaohuan Zhu, University of Nevada Las Vegas
“Young Planets in Protoplanetary Disks: Theory Confronts Observations”
Recently commissioned telescopes and instruments (e.g., Subaru, GPI, VLA, ALMA, EVLA) are now finally able to resolve the protoplanetary disk down to the AU scale, and a rich variety of disk features have been revealed: gaps, large scale disk asymmetry, and spiral arms. To confront these observations, theoretical models need to be developed so that we can use observations to constrain the physics of disk structure and planet formation. In the talk, I will summarize our recent progress on constructing global 3-D MHD simulations of protoplanetary disks, and what we have learned by comparing these simulations with observations. To directly find young planets, I will suggest that disks around these forming planets, so-called circumplanetary disks, could be the key and we may have already found some circumplanetary disk candidates. Finally, I will present hydrodynamical simulations on circumplanetary disks. These simulations suggest that spiral shocks in circumplanetary disks could drive efficient disk accretion, and we may find many such disks using ALMA in future.