CIRCUMSTELLAR DISKS: FUELING STARS AND FORMING PLANETS

The coming decade promises to see the most progression to date in understanding the formation and early evolution of extrasolar planetary systems. The first five years will see the culmination of more than a decade’s work to get planned surveys in the far-infrared and submillimetre on the sky through the Herschel Space Observatory and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. Most importantly, the completion of ALMA construction in 2013 will provide the critical instrumentation to resolve and understand the dynamics, chemistry and evolution of circumstellar disks in star forming regions and the substructure of debris disks around main sequence stars, counterparts to our own outer solar system and Kuiper Belt. To make the most effective use of the opportunities for advancing disk studies in the coming decade, Canada must foster a vigorous, well populated community of researchers to take advantage of our (essentially) unlimited access to ALMA and EVLA; complete the JCMT Legacy Survey, critical for the detection of disk hosts which will be the ALMA and EVLA targets; work to provide the means to build research teams across Canada, including at NRC; encourage computing consortia to meet the challenge of disk theory and modeling simulations; and pursue Band 1 development for ALMA. Subject headings: