Speaker
Description
Oxygen and carbon are key ingredients for the formation of planets. While planet-forming regions around T Tauri stars are typically oxygen-rich, planet-forming regions around very low-mass star (VLMS) are known to exhibit highly carbon-rich environments. Infrared spectroscopy provides a powerful tool to detect and quantify these essential building blocks in protoplanetary disks. In this talk, I will present an overview of water detections in the MIRI mid-INfrared Disk Survey (MINDS) JWST GTO program, with a particular focus on disks around VLMS. Our analysis reveals the first evidence of abundant water in several carbon-rich VLMS disks and shows that hydrocarbons can easily outshine water emission, leading to their carbon-rich spectral appearance. These results imply that planet-forming regions in VLMS disks can maintain high carbon-to-oxygen ratios (C/O > 1) while still harboring substantial water, potentially influencing the formation and composition of terrestrial planets around VLMS. Using full thermochemical disk models, we show that while the carbon-to-oxygen ratio (C/O) is an important factor influencing the mid-infrared spectral appearance, the absolute abundances of carbon and oxygen (C/H and O/H) play an even more significant role.
| Talk category | NOVA Network 2 |
|---|---|
| Preference for a talk or poster | Talk |
| Talk preference for PhD students | Fourth |
