Abstract:  How do planets form? How fast and efficient is this process? Are they responsible for the observed ubiquity of annular gaps and rings in protoplanetary disks? In this talk I will first motivate how answering these questions can inform critical questions in exoplanetary science, from the origins of exoplanetary system demographics to the composition of giant planet atmospheres. Next I will summarize how radio interferometric images of disks obtained with ALMA provide key diagnostics for the physics and timescales of planet formation, if those images are reconstructed from the Fourier domain measurement with high fidelity. I will then demonstrate how we can apply modern statistical methods such as Gaussian processes to super-resolve images of disks, discussing the physical inference this allows us to conduct on planet formation, disk-planet interactions, and hydrodynamic disk processes. Finally, using mm ALMA surveys of disks I will show how super-resolution imaging is evolving our picture of disk structure, and how we can continue to progress this approach to identify the role planets and hydrodynamic instabilities play in disk evolution, thereby answering our initial questions. 

Please click the link to join the webinar: https://psu.zoom.us/s/98744005110