CIPS Seminar

Abstract: The recent successes of large-scale exoplanet surveys have opened the field of exoplanet statistics, revolutionizing our view of the universe. We now know that planets are common around other stars, but also that exoplanets come in a variety of sizes, compositions, and orbital architectures that that often differ in striking ways from our own solar system. But how and why do such diverse exoplanet systems form? To answer these fundamental questions, we must understand the structure and evolution of the "protoplanetary disks" of gas and dust around young stars where planets form. To this end, we are conducting large-scale surveys of nearby star-forming regions with the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA), which is now offering orders of magnitude higher sensitivity and resolution over previous (sub-)mm facilities. I will give an overview of the recent ALMA protoplanetary disk surveys and their implications for disk evolution and planet formation as well as present the latest results from our survey of gas disk sizes in the Lupus star-forming region.