Kinematic detection of a planet carving a gap in a protoplanetary disk

C Pinte, G van Der Plas, F Ménard, DJ Price… - Nature …, 2019 - nature.com
C Pinte, G van Der Plas, F Ménard, DJ Price, V Christiaens, T Hill, D Mentiplay, C Ginski…
Nature Astronomy, 2019nature.com
We still do not understand how planets form or why extrasolar planetary systems are so
different from our own Solar System. However, the past few years have dramatically
changed our view of the disks of gas and dust around young stars. Observations with the
Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and extreme adaptive-optics systems have
revealed that most—if not all—disks contain substructure, including rings and gaps,–,
spirals,–, azimuthal dust concentrations and shadows cast by misaligned inner disks,. These …
Abstract
We still do not understand how planets form or why extrasolar planetary systems are so different from our own Solar System. However, the past few years have dramatically changed our view of the disks of gas and dust around young stars. Observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and extreme adaptive-optics systems have revealed that most—if not all—disks contain substructure, including rings and gaps, –, spirals, –, azimuthal dust concentrations and shadows cast by misaligned inner disks,. These features have been interpreted as signatures of newborn protoplanets, but the exact origin is unknown. Here we report the kinematic detection of a few-Jupiter-mass planet located in a gas and dust gap at 130 au in the disk surrounding the young star HD 97048. An embedded planet can explain both the disturbed Keplerian flow of the gas, detected in CO lines, and the gap detected in the dust disk at the same radius. While gaps appear to be a common feature in protoplanetary disks,, we present a direct correspondence between a planet and a dust gap, indicating that at least some gaps are the result of planet–disk interactions.
nature.com