FUV-Driven Photoevaporation of protoplanetary Disks

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Cornelis Petrus Dullemond
• Subject Area: Astrophysics and Astronomy
• Term: from 2011 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 188379957

Young stars are surrounded by gaseous disks which are the likely birthplaces of planets. One of the key questions is: How long will there be enough dust and/or gas in the disk available for the planet formation process, and where will most of this matter be? Observational estimates yield disk life times of a few million years. This is much shorter than classical viscous accretion disk models can explain, so clearly some process must exist that actively destroys the disk. Whatever this process is, it will likely severely affect the distribution of matter in the disk as well, a critical issue for planet formation that is observationally ill constrained. In this proposal we intend to study the process of photoevaporation of protoplanetary disks by their own host star as the disk destruction mechanism. Photoevaporation powered by EUV photons (13.6 - 100 eV) and X-rays from the host star is reasonably well understood nowadays, but evaporation powered by FUV photons (6 - 13.6 eV) from the host star is only very marginally understood because it is much more complex. Yet, preliminary work indicates that FUV-driven photoevaporation might be the dominant mechanism. The goal of this proposal is to understand FUV-driven photoevaporation by developing self-consistent numerical models of this process, and how it affects the matter distribution in these cradles of planetary systems.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants