Title:

Planetary Beginnings: Probing the Inner AU of Protoplanetary Disks



Josh Eisner
Berkeley



Abstract:

Planetary systems form out of disks of dust and gas that are remnants
of the star formation process.  The structure of these protoplanetary
disks within 1 AU of their central stars has important implications
for terrestrial planet formation, giant planet migration, and disk
accretion.  I present spectrally dispersed infrared interferometric
observations that can spatially resolve dust and gas within 1 AU of
young stars.  After a brief review of how physical information about
young star+disk systems can be recovered from interferometric
measurements, I discuss new insights into star and planet formation
processes that are enabled with these data.