Monday 21st July
Most of the current knowledge about the structure and evolution of protoplanetary disks (photometry, SED class, images in scattered light, etc.) originate from the dust component, whereas the gas is more difficult to observe and more difficult to model. Yet, it is the gas component that sets the initial condition for planet formation and, by its dispersal, drives the evolution to debris disks.
With new space-borne and ground-based telescopes (Herschel, SOFIA, ALMA) we will be able to study bright atomic and molecular lines in the far IR that allow us to determine directly the mass, the temperature distribution and the chemical composition of the gas in the disks, provided that we can trust the models. By comparing objects of different ages, we can thereby reveal the evolution of the gas in protoplanetary disks.
In this splinter session, we aim to summarise the current status of gas observations and gas models of protoplanetary disks, including future observational capabilities and the current limitations in models and theory. The focus will be on disks around low-mass stars. Some key questions are: