Speaker: Aleksandra Kuznetsova, University of Connecticut

Host: Jake Simon

Title: Cosmic Cohorts: Insights into star and planet formation from numerical modeling

Abstract: Accretion disks of gas and dust around young protostars comprise the reservoir of ingredients from which planets are assembled. Up until recently, planet formation was considered to take place over millions of years during a steady state viscous evolution of this protoplanetary disk. However, results from recent mm and sub-mm surveys of these objects alongside insights from numerical simulations have suggested that planet formation may be underway at much earlier phases -- while the disk is still forming and dynamically coupled to the larger scale star-forming environment. Additionally, studies have found that this inflow of natal interstellar material can persist into later phases, with stochastic episodes of filamentary inflow, or streamers, further perturbing planet-forming disks. With multi-fluid hydrodynamic modeling of these systems, we can investigate how planetary ingredients are transported and processed in these more dynamic environments, accounting for the filamentary inflow of material. In this talk, I will discuss recent numerical studies on star and planet formation, what we've learned about the effects of infall on disk dynamics and planet formation processes, and how we might leverage numerical techniques to place observational constraints on the dynamical histories of planet-forming disks. 

Bio: Aleksandra Kuznetsova is an Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Connecticut. Her work focuses on understanding how star formation processes influence the properties of planetary systems, such as our own solar system using a combination of hydrodynamic, astrochemical, and radiative transfer modeling.
Aleksandra received undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy (B.S) and Geological Sciences (B.A)  from the University of Rochester. She earned her PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Michigan in 2020. Before starting at UConn, Aleksandra was an NHFP Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History and a Flatiron Research Fellow at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics .