Water and Organic Molecules in the Planet Formation Region of Disks

Details Water and Organic Molecules in the Planet Formation Region of Disks Water and Organic Molecules in the Planet Formation Region of Disks

Mar 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008sptz.prop50641c&link_type=abstract

Spitzer Proposal ID #50641

Physics

Scientific paper

Recent results from Spitzer demonstrate dramatic advances in our ability to probe the gaseous component of disks. When observed at high signal-to-noise (S/N), circumstellar disks are found to show a rich spectrum of atomic and molecular (water, OH, organics) lines that originates in the planet formation region of the disk (radius<10 AU). Water vapor is found to be abundant and substantial molecular abundance variations are observed in the handful of disks studied at high S/N. These results demonstrate the feasibility of using the spectroscopy of gaseous disks to probe the physical and chemical processes that drive planet formation and disk evolution. We therefore propose high S/N Spitzer IRS SH+LH spectroscopy of a sample of objectss spanning a range of evolutionary ages, stellar luminosities, and dust disk geometries. The proposed observations will (i) explore the extent to which we can detect the formation of planetesimals or icy planets by the chemical signature that they are expected to impose on the gaseous inner disk; (ii) search for chemical evidence of the disk turbulence that is predicted by theories of disk accretion; and (iii) provide an independent probe of the extent of grain settling in disks, an important first step in planet formation. These path-finding observations will lay the foundation for studies of gaseous disks at planet formation distances.

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