Tracing The Physical Conditions of Planet Formation with Molecular Excitation

Abstract

Understanding the physical structure of the planet formation environment, the protoplanetary disk, is essential for the interpretation of high resolution observations of the dust and future observations of the magnetic field structure. Observations of multiple transitions of molecular species offers a unique view of the underlying physical structure through excitation analyses. Here we describe a new method to extract high-resolution spectra from low-resolution observations, then provide two case studies of how molecular excitation analyses were used to constrain the physical structure in TW Hya, the closest protoplanetary disk to Earth.