Brenda Matthews (NRC Herzberg)
ALMA Observations of Debris Disks: A Window into the Diversity of Planetary
Systems
ALMA has now observed a significant number of debris disks, ranging from
those well-studied by
earlier facilities to those recently identified. An interesting
characteristic of this class of circumstellar
disks, those collisionally-generated around young and old stars, is their
striking diversity. While
the mechanism which generates debris disks is most commonly a collisional
cascade acting to return
large solid bodies to small dust grains, debris disks are not easily
classified into categories by their
morphology. ALMA has revealed disks which appear very broad in radial
distribution and also
many that show confined narrow rings of emission. Most interestingly, ALMA
has finally begun to
reveal significant numbers of debris disks with evidence of molecular gas
emission, including several
which are so young that the origin of the molecular gas is difficult to
discern: is the gas leftover
from a protoplanetary disk or is it, like the dust, second-generation,
i.e., the product of collisional
processes? These disks essentially bridge the gap between transition and
debris disks, revealing the
latter to be very much along the continuum of circumstellar disk evolution
rather than a class by
themselves.