Status of the Planet Formation Imager (PFI) concept
Michael J. Ireland, John D. Monnier, Stefan Kraus, Andrea Isella,, Stefano Minardi, Romain Petrov, Theo ten Brummelaar, John Young, Gautum, Vasisht, David Mozurkewich, Stephen Rinehart, Ernest A. Michael, Gerard van, Belle, Julien Woillez
TL;DR
The paper discusses the Planet Formation Imager (PFI) project, which aims to directly image planet formation processes at high resolution to understand key mechanisms influencing planetary system development.
Contribution
It presents the overall vision, key technological requirements, and conceptual design considerations for the PFI project to achieve its scientific goals.
Findings
Defined key technological requirements for PFI
Outlined cost envelope and design uncertainties
Highlighted importance of high-resolution imaging for planet formation
Abstract
The Planet Formation Imager (PFI) project aims to image the period of planet assembly directly, resolving structures as small as a giant planet's Hill sphere. These images will be required in order to determine the key mechanisms for planet formation at the time when processes of grain growth, protoplanet assembly, magnetic fields, disk/planet dynamical interactions and complex radiative transfer all interact - making some planetary systems habitable and others inhospitable. We will present the overall vision for the PFI concept, focusing on the key technologies and requirements that are needed to achieve the science goals. Based on these key requirements, we will define a cost envelope range for the design and highlight where the largest uncertainties lie at this conceptual stage.
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.