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With the ever-increasing census of protoplanetary disks observed in mm emission, disk population synthesis studies have become an important tool to constrain expected disk properties and the occurrence of sub-structures. Previous studies have revealed that the observed spectral indices are consistent with ubiquitous substructures emerging at early times. However, it still remains challenging to explain the relation between observed dust and gas radii.

In this work, we perform a disk population synthesis study trying to simultaneously reproduce the observed gas and dust disk radii, the spectral index and the millimetre flux. The substructures are modelled with imposing planetary gaps. We make use of the Tri-PoD dust model for the dust evolution, giving us a more accurate dust distribution in structured disks compared to previous population studies. Furthermore, allowing the consideration of additional effects, namely the potential formation of planetesimals via the Streaming instability in the substructures and the consideration of external photoevaporation.

Our results show how the inferred disk properties change considering our improved model. They show the effect external photoevaporation has on the disk radii and the continued challenge to match them with observations. Furthermore, our results highlight the challenge for dust evolution models to explain the disks with spectral indices below two. To explain these observations, we check if more sophisticated radiative transfer models(RADMC) alleviate this tension. This work highlights the importance of accurately modelling the dust distribution in the substructures in the disk and the resulting dust transport passing through them.

BIO

2020- 2024: University of Bern.

2024- present: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Host: Chris Ormel