Unveiling properties of transition disks

GISELA A. ROMERO; M. R. SCHREIBER; L. CIEZA; J. SWIFT; J. WILLIAMS; M. ORELLANA

Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Congreso; IAU XXVII General Assembly; 2009

IAU

Circumstellar disks around Pre-Main-Sequence (PMS) stars are thesites of planet formation. Spectacular candidates for disks perhaps presently forming planets are the so-called transition disk systemswith their optically thin inner disks and optically thick outer disks. Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain their inner opacity holes, i.e. planet formation, grain growth, photoevaporation, tidal truncation in close binaries, and their relative importance is currentlycompletely unconstrained. Here, we present a project which consists of performing multiwavelength observations of newly discovered transition disks to distinguish between the four mentioned scenarios and identify candidates for hosting forming planets to be followed-up with Herschel and ALMA observational capabilities.