The ALMA Survey to Resolve exoKuiper Belt Substructures

Speaker

Sebastian Marino Estay, University of Exeter UK

Abstract

Planetary systems are composed of not only planets but also minor bodies similar to asteroids and comets, which we typically find in belts analogous to the asteroid and Kuiper belt in the solar system. Although we cannot detect these bodies individually, mutual collisions between these km-sized planetesimals produce high dust levels that are readily detectable in exoKuiper belts around 30% of nearby stars. These planetesimals form as a byproduct of planet formation and their distribution is likely shaped by the presence of planets in a similar way as the Asteroid and the Kuiper belts were shaped by Jupiter and Neptune. Therefore, these belts provide unique constraints on the formation, architecture, and dynamics of planetary systems. In this talk, I will give an overview of the study of exoKuiper belts and show some of the main results from the ALMA large program ARKS which constrained the detailed structure of these belts to learn about how these form in protoplanetary discs and evolve over Gyr timescales.

Speaker Biography

Seba is an Associate Professor at the University of Exeter in the UK where he leads a group studying the formation and evolution of debris discs. Seba started his career in Chile where he did his undergrad and master's at Universidad de Chile, studying protoplanetary discs. In 2015, he moved to the UK to do a PhD at the University of Cambridge, with a focus on debris discs which has become the focus of his research. Following his PhD, he did a postdoc at MPIA in Heidelberg followed by a Junior Research Fellowship at Cambridge. He finally settled in Exeter in 2023 funded by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and more recently by an ERC Starting Grant.

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