Coordination Funds

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The Research Unit FOR 2285 was established in 2015 to investigate debris disks - belts of comets, asteroids, and their dust around mainsequence stars. During the first phase, we carried out analytic and numerical modeling of their collisional and dynamical evolution. In parallel, we conducted impact experiments to simulate collisional processes and performed laboratory studies of the optical properties of dust and its interaction with stellar radiation. Combining the theoretical and laboratory results, we have produced detailed models that explain the observations of individual disk systems and explored statistics over larger samples, giving us new insights into a variety of puzzles including the origin of debris discs and the composition of their dust. Furthermore, we have conducted and published our own new observations of key planetary systems. Our research is already being utilised by and inspiring the community and is delivering testable predictions for future observations. The proposed second phase of the Research Unit will build on our successes from the first phase, whilst also incorporating some new lines of research. On the theory side, we will address both long-standing problems, such as the origins of warm and hot dust and determining what causes disk asymmetries, as well as new ones that we have identified through our research in the first phase, such as the 'disk mass problem'. On the laboratory side, we will benefit from the setups that we have put into operation and from the experience gained in the first phase to produce realistic dust analogs and determine their collisional and optical properties in parameter spaces that have not previously been investigated. With laboratory results now coming in, we will advantageously incorporate them into the theoretical models to meet the Research Unit objectives. The primary goal of the Research Unit is to better understand the properties, physics, and diversity of debris disks and what they tell us about the architecture, formation, and evolution of planetary systems.