Speaker: Mark Wyatt (IoA Cambridge)

Date: Wednesday 21 February 2024

Time: 15:00

Location: Berry lecture theatre (3.21)

The debris disk paradigm and its challenges

Debris disk is a catch-all term that refers to any component of a planetary system that is not a planet. In the Solar System this refers to the asteroids and comets in the Asteroid and Kuiper belts as well as the dust and gas derived from them, such as the zodiacal cloud. Studying the structure of extrasolar debris disks provides unique constraints on the underlying planetary system and on the processes of planet formation and protoplanetary disk evolution. Debris disks also have important implications for processes affecting the planets, such as impact events that may strip an atmosphere or deliver volatiles. Their presence or absence also has consequences both positive and negative for the detectability of exoplanets in the system. In this colloquium I will describe the paradigm that explains most observations of debris disks (which is one of collisionally eroding planetesimal belts that were born in protoplanetary disks) as well as its challenges arising from recent observations of gas and warm dust in systems both young (few Myr) and old (few Gyr).