Institute for Advanced Study Informal Astrophysics Seminar

Planets are formed out of sub-micrometer sized solid particles that orbit young stars in their accretion disks. The growth of these particles, their transport, and the structure and dynamics of the gaseous accretion disk are tightly interlinked. Dust continuum emission provides a powerful tracer of the dynamical processes that drive disk evolution and dispersal. The size evolution of solids is an important piece of this physical puzzle that is often left out for convenience. In this talk, I will present our recent efforts to probe the physical structure of disks and their evolution by comparing detailed physical models of growth and transport of solids to current resolved and unresolved observations.