Lucas Cieza (U. Hawaii)

Studying the (Sub)millimeter Evolution of Protoplanetary Disks with CCAT

Over the last few years, infrared (IR) Spitzer maps of nearby star-forming regions have tremendously enriched our knowledge of the structure and evolution of protoplanetary disks. While protoplanetary disks remain optically thick in the IR, they become optically thin at longer (sub)millimeter wavelengths. The emission lines of many important gas tracers also lie in the (sub)millimeter regime. Therefore, (sub)millimeter observations are sensitive to dust properties (total dust masses and grain size distributions) and gas content and are thus highly complementary to IR data. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the (sub)millimeter properties of disks clearly lags behind. In this talk, I will argue that large (sub)millimeter maps of molecular clouds from CCAT, beautifully complemented by existing Spitzer and Herschel data sets, will be invaluable for our understanding of the evolution of protoplanetary disks and that CCAT will also be a fantastic tool for finding interesting objects to be followed up in detail with ALMA.