Speaker: Lewis Watt (University of Bristol)

Date: Thursday 8 June 2023

Time: 14:00

Location: NSQI Seminar Room

Giant Impacts and Extreme Debris Disks

In many formation scenarios, it is necessary for giant impacts between planetary embryos to form the terrestrial planets we find within our own Solar System. Giant impacts will eject a substantial amount of material to the surrounding stellar environment. The material will form a disk that potentially can be observed from outside the system. A subclass of debris disks known as extreme debris disks are candidates for recent evidence of a giant impact. Extreme debris disks are bright and warm which usually places them close to their host star within the terrestrial planet formation space. Typically, they are observed around young stars with ages less than 200 Myr which places them in the expected time for late-stage terrestrial planet formation that involves giant impacts. We explore through a suite of numerical simulations how giant impacts and extreme debris disks are linked.