Judit Szulagyi - April 28, 2017

The key for planet and satellite formation: the circumplanetary disk

In this talk, I will review what we can learn about late gas-giant planet
formation and satellite formation from circumplanetary disk simulations. Forming
giant planets thought to form their own accretion disk, which we call the
circumplanetary disk. This disk channels the gas to the gas-giant at the last
stage of formation and it is the birthplace for satellites to form. Because the
circumplanetary disk is tiny in comparison to the circumstellar disk, it is
challenging to resolve it both via numerical simulations and observations. I
will present the highest resolution simulations to date and discuss what we can
learn from them about planetary accretion and satellite formation. I will talk
about the entropy and luminosity of this disk and show how it can affect the
observations of forming planets. Finally, I will close by showing the ALMA
observations we carried out to detect the circumplanetary disk for the first
time and discuss what are the possibilities to detect these disks in the future.