date: 2009 Sep.10(Thu) 15:00 - 17:00
room: Kobe University, Shizen Bldg. #3, room 508,
speaker: Mr. Sebastian Müller (Friedrich Schiller University, Ph.D. Student)
title: Debris Disks and Their Dust
abstract: Debris disks are known to be a common feature around main-sequence stars. Comprising solid material ranging from micron-sized dust to planetesimals of several km in radius, debris disks are the remnants of planet formation. However, sensitive to observations is only the disks' dust portion. This talk focusses on modeling such disk systems; in particular two approaches are presented: the traditional modeling method and a new, more elaborate one as proposed by Krivov et al. 2008. While the traditional way simply assumes powerlaws for the emitting dust's spatial and grain size distributions,the new approach provides a self-consistent description of the dust and planetesimal distribution, paying more attention to the dynamical processes at work in debris disks. Applications to the debris disk systems of HR 8799 and Vega for the old and new modeling approach, respectively, are discussed.