The Inner Astronomical Unit of Protoplanetary Disks

TL;DR

This paper presents advancements in optical interferometry for studying the inner regions of protoplanetary disks, revealing new insights into disk winds, asymmetries, and heating processes around young stars.

Contribution

It introduces new instrumentation and observational techniques, including the first J band interferometric observations of a young stellar object, and provides novel scientific findings on disk winds and heating.

Findings

Evidence of dusty winds from SU Aurigae's inner regions

Revealed inclination-induced asymmetries in the disk

Detected viscous heating in FU Orionis's inner disk

Abstract

A golden age of interferometry is upon us, allowing observations at smaller scales in greater detail than ever before. In few fields has this had the huge impact as that of planet formation and the study of young stars. State of the art high angular resolution observations provide invaluable insights into a host of physical processed from accretion and sublimation, to disk winds and other outflows. In this thesis, I present the wide-ranging works of my PhD, encompassing both instrumentation and observational science. Instrumentational activities stem from the development of new generation baseline solutions at CHARA to the commissioning of a new observing mode on MIRC-X, allowing for the first ever J band interferometric observations of a young stellar object ever published. The science results find direct evidence of a dusty wind emanating from the innermost regions of the young object SU Aurigae in addition to exquisite image reconstruction revealing inclination induced asymmetries. Additionally, I find evidence of viscous heating of the inner disk of outbursting star FU Orionis as I derive the temperature gradient to unparalleled precision. While it is difficult to draw one overall conclusion from the varied works of this thesis, the results described here are a testament to the uniqueness of young stellar systems and provide vital information on some the most ubiquitous processes in astrophysics. The instrumentational developments also open up exciting opportunities for future science in the ever-growing field of optical interferometry.