Protoplanetary disks and their physical and chemical processes

“Protoplanetary disks and their physical and chemical processes” is an EAI Project Team.

Project Team Coordinator
Catherine Walsh

University of Leeds, UK.

Gesa Bertrang

Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany.

  1. The importance of chemical processing of interstellar organic matter within the protoplanetary disk during its formation and evolution
  2. The role of the physics and environment of the protoplanetary disk in setting the chemical composition of (exo)planet- and (exo)comet-building material
  3. The identification of key observations required to elucidate the physical and chemical structure of protoplanetary disks, and the degree of chemical complexity attained therein
  4. The mechanism of mass and angular momentum transport through the protoplanetary disk
  5. Dust growth, fragmentation, settling, and drift: first steps towards the birth of planets
  6. The impact of forming planets on the physical and chemical structure of protoplanetary disks
  7. The role of midplane chemistry (e.g., the creation of snowlines) and dynamics in setting the elemental composition of forming gas-giant planetary atmospheres
  8. Tracing the interstellar isotopic fingerprint from the molecular cloud, to the pre-Solar nebula, to the Solar System”