The disk in relation to the formation of planets and their protoatmospheres----International Space Science Institute

The disk in relation to the formation of planets and their protoatmospheres

OVERVIEW

Context

At the end of 2012 ISSI organized a forum on “the science of exoplanets and their systems”, which was held in Bern on December 5th and 6th with the participation of about 25 of the leading experts in the field. The forum discussed in detail what the avenues for new progress in our understanding of exoplanets are, their distribution, their formation and their characteristics. One of the planned outcomes of the forum was to identify key subjects for future ISSI workshops. The outcome of the forum has been the subject of an article published in Astrobiology (Lammer et al., 2013, 793). Among the subjects considered for future workshops, the priority was given to the theme of “the disk in relation to the formation of planets and their protoatmospheres”. Indeed, the interrelationship between circumstellar disks, their evolution and their relation to forming planets and their protoatmospheres remains poorly understood despite an increasing body of modeling and observational data. The workshop will address this topic in depth with the participation of the best specialists covering the different aspects of the problem.

Objectives

One great challenge of modern astrophysics is the understanding of the origin and formation of planets around young stars, and of the resulting diversity of planetary objects and their protoatmospheres. It is assumed and for one part observed that planets form inside the circumstellar disks which are one of the characteristics of young stars. But a coherent global picture of how planets and their atmospheres form and evolve inside those disks is yet to emerge. The workshop, with the contribution of the best specialists in that field, will revisit all available scenarios for the joint evolution of disks, planets and atmospheres in the light of the most recent observations and of available models. It will try to establish the most likely scenarios for this co-evolution and from that will seek to improve our understanding of the formation and early evolution of the different types of planets.

The Workshop is designed to review in depth what has been achieved in the research on circumstellar disks and exoplanets. The main goal of the proposed ISSI-Beijing Workshop is to discuss the state of the art of the research and future prospective.

Following discussions by the conveners, it is proposed that the Workshop will cover the following main themes:

Introduction to the theme
Formation of planets in protostellar disks
Emergence of planetary system
Disk dispersal
Atmosphere formation and evolution
Debris disks and their evolution
The way forward: future observations, facilities and models

CONVENERS

Willy Benz	University of Bern, Switzerland
Michel Blanc	IRAP/OMP, Toulouse, France
Chen Ding	NSSC, CAS, Beijing, China
Maurizio Falanga	ISSI-BJ, Beijing, China
Malcolm Fridlund	DLR, Berlin, Germany
Manuel Guedel	University of Vienna, Austria
Gregory Herczeg	Beijing University, Beijing, China
Helmut Lammer	Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria
Doug Lin	University of California Observatories, USA
Michael R. Meyer	ETH, Zurich, Switzerland
Rafael Rodrigo	ISSI, Bern, Switzerland
Stéphane Udry	Geneva Observatory, Geneva, Switzerland

Program

Participant list

Workshops