Institute for Advanced Study Astrophysics Seminar

The common observation that Jupiter's Galilean moons resemble a miniature Solar System has long been seen as evidence that young giant planets are surrounded by circumplanetary disks of gas and dust. Recently, one circumplanetary disk - around the exoplanet PDS 70c - has been directly detected. It is perhaps surprising that we have not seen more. The theory of circumplanetary disks, although analogous to well-trodden territory in protoplanetary and black hole accretion, has novel aspects and is quite uncertain. I will discuss results from computational work that sheds partial light on the conditions for circumplanetary disk formation, and the structure of gas flows in disks when they form.