A colorful view of planet formation:A multi-wavelength study of planet-disk interactions

Abstract

The broad variety of planets and planetary systems discovered in the last couple of decades around other stars has taught us that these can be, and more often than not tend to be, very different from our own. In order to explain this variety, we must gain a better understanding of the physical processes leading to planet formation, and of the formation environments themselves. Protoplanetary disks are large, flat structures of gas and dust surrounding and orbiting young stars, and they are both the location and the material from which planets are formed. In order to learn more about the planet formation process, we need to observe it in action. Unfortunately, forming planets are extremely hard to detect with current instruments. However, the interaction between a forming planet and its disk can lead to the formation of structures and even misalignments in the disk. This can in theory result in observable features we should be able to detect with current instrumentation, and would explain a large number of features seen in observations of protoplanetary disks at multiple wavelengths. This thesis presents research on three individual sources observed in both near-infrared (NIR) and (sub-)millimeter wavelengths with the SPHERE and ALMA instruments, with a focus on observable disk features that could be linked to planet formation, as well as a set of hydrodynamical models of planet-disk interactions and their NIR images obtained through radiative transfer modeling, with the aim of studying the observable signatures arising from these interactions