Abstracts
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"The Central Holes of Wide Transitional Disks: Investigating Planetary Clearing"
Young planets are difficult objects to study as they are embedded (at least partially) in their stars accretion disk, and the host stars are young and highly active. This makes traditional methods of observation challenging. Current theoretical models are based on data from observations of the start of the process (protoplanetary disks) and the end of the process (debris disks). Transitional disks are a relatively newly discovered class of stellar accretion disks between protoplanetary disks and debris disks in the evolutionary track. They have a optically thin inner region (a 'hole') and an optically thick outer region, giving their SEDs a small near-IR excess but a large mid/long-IR excess. Transitional disks can form via a variety of pathways, however disks with very wide (10's of AU) inner holes that sustain active accretion onto the host star can only be explained by the clearing action of multiple planets. The indirect effect of these planets on the dust distribution of the system can be detected by new technology (ALMA), we propose that this indirect tracer is the best method for the detection of young planetary systems.
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