High-resolution observations of protoplanetary disks using ALMA, VLT-SPHERE, and JWST reveal that substructures such as rings, gaps, vortices, warps, and spiral arms are common. The origins of these features remain under debate, with potential causes including cloud-disk interactions, infall, instabilities, and embedded planets. These substructures are also recognized as key sites for planet formation, as they trap dust, regulate volatile transport, promote planetesimal formation by increasing dust-to-gas ratios, and influence planetary growth and migration.

This session aims to examine the dual role of disk substructures as both products of the physical and chemical evolution of protoplanetary disks and as active drivers of planet formation. We seek to develop a more integrated, interdisciplinary understanding of how substructures shape planet-forming environments by bringing together researchers from theory, observations, and experiments (including disk dynamics and evolution, dust and volatile transport, planetesimal and planet formation, astrochemistry, and meteoritics).

Programme

The session will be structured around three topical blocks:

• Observations of disk substructures: combining high-resolution imaging with new insights from JWST to constrain the physical and chemical conditions shaping substructures in protoplanetary disks.
• Origins of disk substructures: mechanisms responsible for their formation, how models and observations can be combined to test their origin, and how their diversity relates to disk environments.
• Substructures as engines of planet formation: their impact on dust evolution, volatile transport, and planetesimal formation, and the conditions they provide for the formation of different types of planets.

Scientific organisers

• Sonia Cornejo (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany, chair)
• Sebastiaan Krijt (University of Exeter, UK, co-chair)
• Joanna Drążkowska (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany, co-chair)
• Giovanni Rosotti (Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy)
• Nienke van der Marel (Leiden University, Netherlands)
• Marion Villenave (Institut de Planetologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble, France)

Contact

Sonia Cornejo (cornejo @ mps.mpg.de)