arXiv subjects

Giuseppe Lodato

Publications and source records attributed to Giuseppe Lodato.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

exoALMA XXV: A Statistical Analysis of Gaseous Substructure in Low-Inclination Disks

Protoplanetary disks exhibit complex structure in both their gas dynamics and their temperature. Characterizing it has proven challenging, owing to the mismatch between the observed complexity and the relatively simple semi-analytical models typically used to interpret it. To augment these analyses, we apply the second-order structure function to the velocity and temperature perturbations of four low-inclination sources from the exoALMA program, each measured against a noise-only null built from the data themselves. All exhibit correlated structure. Its radial correlation length is limited by the beam in every case, which excludes non-axisymmetric structure on radial scales larger than ~1.5 pressure scale heights. In three of the four disks the structure is instead resolved and elongated in azimuth, by factors of 1.6-2.3, as expected of small-scale perturbations sheared out by Keplerian rotation. We further introduce two statistics that characterize spiral structure without tracing an arm crest: a modal power spectrum, measuring the periodicity of the azimuthal structure, and a winding contrast, measuring the radial dependence of its phase. The velocity residuals of three disks are significantly wound. MWC 758 is the only source in which the winding is coherent across the disk and shared by the temperature field. Its trailing m=1 temperature structure is consistent with the illumination of a warp, while its velocity field carries small-scale, sheared structure that could redistribute angular momentum. Because neither statistic requires a crest, both extend a quantitative description of winding to the flocculent regime, where a spiral cannot be parameterized.

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arXiv2026

Planet formation on solar system scales

Giant planets are often regarded as primordial protoplanetary "architects". Their formation and interactions with planetesimals and other planets during and after the protoplanetary disc phase are key to setting the blueprint of the planetary systems we observe today. Catching nascent gas giants is our best opportunity to uncover these crucial steps in the planet formation process and shed light on the origins of our own solar system. Over the last decade, ALMA has revolutionised our understanding of planet formation; still, detecting signatures of Jupiter-like planets has remained out of reach. We argue that ALMA2040, a next-generation sub(mm) interferometer with improved sensitivity ($\times25$ in the continuum and $\times10$ for line emission) and a $\times3$ higher angular resolution compared to ALMA, will be sensitive to (sub)mm emission around a forming Jupiter-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star within $150\,{\rm pc}$ and allow kinematically characterising interactions of Jovian and sub-Jovian planets with their natal disc. ALMA2040 will provide unique and unprecedented insights into how gas giants carve gaps, accrete material, form satellites, and affect the architectures of their co-evolving planetary systems.

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arXiv2026

Planet forming disk populations and their connection to the environment

Existing sub-mm observatories such as ALMA have provided statistics on the planet-forming mass reservoirs within circumstellar disks around stars in stellar clusters out to distances of $\sim$400pc. However, these disks are not where most planets form. Many stars, and hence planets, form in more massive clusters, which are only found at larger distances. Environmental conditions that affect disks - such as UV radiation field, ambient gaseous mass reservoir, and stellar density - change significantly as a function of cluster mass, implying that our current knowledge of the disk population from current facilities is severely biased. Characterising planet formation in stellar clusters towards the peak of the cluster mass function requires determining the distribution of planet forming disk masses out to $\sim$3kpc, which encapsulates the nearby parts of the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way and contains multiple massive stellar clusters. ALMA2040 will provide the leap in sensitivity needed to move beyond detections of only a handful of disks and robustly measure the slope and median of the disk mass distribution at these distances. This will mark the transition from studying individual detections to population-level studies of planet formation across diverse cluster environments. This has synergy with existing and upcoming measurements of accretion rates in these distant clusters, which combined provide a measure of the accretion timescale, enabling us to distinguish various evolutionary pathways and assess how they depend on cluster mass and star-forming environment.

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arXiv2026

DEMOS. II. What the full Lupus demographics truly tell us about protoplanetary disc evolution

Assessing whether disc evolution is driven by viscosity or MHD winds is crucial to determine the conditions in which planets form. The rich statistical information encoded in nearby star-forming regions provides an excellent opportunity to probe disc evolution. In this paper, we apply the Bayesian inference tool DEMOS, designed to exploit the statistical properties of disc populations and infer initial conditions and model parameters, to the Lupus disc population. We consider the observed distributions of stellar mass $M_\star$, disc mass $M$ (from continuum flux), mass accretion rate $\dot{M}$ and CO disc size $R_{90%, CO}$. We constrain all parameters for both the viscous model, with internal photoevaporation, and the MHD winds model, with unprecedented precision. The inferred initial conditions suggest that positive correlations between initial disc properties and $M_\star$ must be present. Both models yield a typical $R_0$ of $3-5$ au for a disc around a $0.3\ \text{M}_\odot$ star, with positive stellar-mass dependence. We infer $α$ (or $α_\text{DW}$) of $3-4 \times 10^{-4}$ for discs around $0.3\ \text{M}_\odot$ stars, with an approximately quadratic dependence on $M_\star$. For the viscous-photoevaporative model, the typical wind mass-loss rate is $\dot{M}_\text{w} \sim 10^{-9}$ M$_\odot$ yr$^{-1}$, scaling with $M_\star$ with an exponent of $\sim 2.5$. The inferred mean age is 1.6 Myr for the MHD winds model and 0.9 Myr for the viscous-photoevaporative model. Despite a slight preference for the latter, Bayesian evidence shows that both models reproduce the data comparably well, and neither can be ruled out. However, their best-fit synthetic populations predict substantially different evolutionary pathways. Applying DEMOS to multiple populations, especially evolved ones like Upper Scorpius, will allow to place stronger constraints on disc evolution mechanisms.

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arXiv2026

DEMOS I. A Bayesian inference framework to constrain disc evolution from observed demographics

The mechanism driving the evolution and dispersal of protoplanetary discs has a substantial impact on the theories of planet formation. To date, neither the viscous paradigm nor the MHD wind-driven framework have been ruled out by the observations. The statistical richness of the observed samples provides a unique opportunity to test evolutionary models through population synthesis. However, comparisons between models and observations are normally carried out by eye, and a more statistically rigorous approach has not yet been implemented. We present DEMOS, a Bayesian inference tool that aims to infer the model parameters and initial conditions that best reproduce the full distribution of global properties of disc populations. This framework relies on a comparison between observations and synthetic populations generated with the 1D disc population-synthesis code Diskpop. We tested the tool with both the MHD wind model and the viscous framework with internal photoevaporation. Applying DEMOS to synthetic populations, we find that, for both models, it accurately recovers the model parameters of disc populations and their associated uncertainties, including cases in which initial conditions are correlated with the stellar mass. In the optimal scenario in which disc masses, accretion rates and disc sizes are available, the tool can also constrain the angular-momentum transport parameter. We show that, although parameter estimates are the most precise with samples of about 100 discs, the tool also yields meaningful constraints for smaller populations of 10-30 discs. We further find that the predictions obtained with DEMOS closely align with those found by previous works. We anticipate that DEMOS will be a valuable tool to infer the initial conditions of observed disc populations, to design observational programmes, and to assess which evolutionary model best reproduces the data.

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arXiv2026

Gravitational instability in planet-forming discs

During the earliest phases of star and planet formation, a young star is surrounded by a disc that can become gravitationally unstable. Indeed, if the protoplanetary disc is sufficiently massive, its self-gravity triggers the formation of large scale spiral arms, transporting angular momentum, trapping solid particles and, potentially, collapsing to form sub-stellar companions. In this paper, we review the theoretical and observational advances in the study of gravitational instability in protoplanetary discs over the last 10 years, since the advent of ALMA. These developments have transformed our understanding of gravitational instability, moving beyond its historical role as a theoretical mechanism for giant planet formation toward a physically rich framework that can be directly tested against high-resolution observations.

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arXiv2026

Far-ultraviolet flux distribution in Orion and its relation to stellar accretion

Orion is the closest region hosting active star formation and young OBA stars. Computing far-ultraviolet (FUV) fluxes at its stars is essential to connect stellar and protoplanetary disc properties to the environment. We (1) accurately estimated the FUV flux at a large sample of stars in Orion by statistically accounting for the uncertainty in parallax measurements, and (2) investigated the relation between stellar accretion and external FUV flux by comparing observations and disc evolution models. We selected a large stellar population in Orion, assigned sub-cluster memberships and used 2D dimensional sub-cluster geometry to infer 3D separations from OBA stars and compute the FUV flux at stellar positions. We studied the accretion luminosities Lacc inferred from Ha emission in Gaia XP spectra of Orion sources and determined their detection fraction as a function of age and FUV flux. We compared the results with population synthesis models of viscous discs experiencing external photoevaporation. We provided a publicly available table of FUV fluxes at ~8600 stars in Orion. Most of the stellar population is weakly irradiated <10^{2} G0, ~35% is intermediately irradiated 10^{2}-10^{4} G0, and ~5% has FUV fluxes >10^{4} G0. Gaia-based Lacc decreases with age, and Ha detection fraction declines more rapidly in regions with strong FUV fluxes than in regions exposed to weaker FUV fluxes, broadly consistent with the model. This may suggest that external photoevaporation efficiently depletes strongly FUV-irradiated accretion discs, but it is not sufficient to reliably confirm this conclusion. The provided tools for computing FUV fluxes at Orion stars will be essential for future observations aimed at assessing the role of external photoevaporation on discs. We encourage measurements of stellar and disc properties in Orion, covering FUV fluxes 1-10^5 G0.

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arXiv2026

exoALMA XXII: A Two-dimensional Atlas of Deviations from Keplerian Disks

Protoplanetary disks are the birthplaces of planetary systems, and deviations from Keplerian rotation imprinted in disk gas kinematics serve as key tracers of physical processes and the presence of protoplanets within disks. Using the the CO (J=3-2) data from the exoALMA Large Program encompassing 15 disks, we constructed two-dimensional (2D) maps of centroid velocity, line width, and peak intensity, and extracted non-Keplerian deviations by subtracting smooth Keplerian models. This paper provides the first systematic and uniform overview of 2D gas substructures across the entire exoALMA sample. We find that all targets exhibit large-scale deviations from smooth Keplerian disks, displaying a variety of morphologies including spiral-like structures, arc- or ring-like features, and patterns indicative of variations in the emitting surface height. Non-axisymmetric spiral-arm features are detected or suggested in five disks (CQ Tau, MWC 758, HD 135344B, HD 34282, and SY Cha), and are preferentially found in Herbig Ae/Fe systems. In contrast, some other sources (J1852, PDS 66, and V4046 Sgr), despite exhibiting noticeable deviations, appear to be dynamically quieter. This 2D atlas suggests that kinematic substructures are ubiquitous in large ($\gtrsim$ 100 au) protoplanetary disks with ages of a few million years, based on the observations obtained with sufficient sensitivity at moderate-to-high spatial resolution of $\sim$20 au and high velocity resolution of $\sim$0.1 km s$^{-1}$.

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arXiv2026

exoALMA. XXIV. Formaldehyde Emission in Protoplanetary Disks of exoALMA Compared with Their Properties and Dynamical State

The presence of asymmetries and substructures in protoplanetary disks, revealed by both dust and gas emission, highlights the potential interplay and the broader connection between chemistry and dynamics in disk evolution. We explore multiple relationships using the nonparametric Kendall-$τ$ correlation to examine formaldehyde (H$_2$CO) emission with relation to stellar and disk properties for a subset of disks from the exoALMA sample. We also retrieve the H$_2$CO column density and excitation temperature using four transitions, measured in radial bins of 100 au, and quantify the level of asymmetry in the resolved peak intensity of the H$_2$CO emission. From our correlation analysis, we find no correlations with sufficient statistical significance. However, we identify tentative relationships that can be tested with larger samples. In particular, we report a proposed correlation ($2.1σ$) between stellar effective temperature and the formaldehyde excitation conditions, suggesting that, to first order, the central star dominates the nature of the H$_2$CO emission over possible dynamical asymmetries traced by dust. Although a correlation with the stellar luminosity was also expected, a larger sample is required to confirm or refute this trend. A possible correlation with spectral type, together with the broad range of H$_2$CO excitation temperatures within the inner 100 au of the studied disks, hint at possible multiple chemical formation pathways for H$_2$CO, including both gas-phase reactions and ice-surface chemistry on dust grains.

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arXiv2026

exoALMA XXI: The Morphology and Dynamics of Vertical Flows

Vertical gas flows, such as winds and meridional circulations, are natural outcomes of protoplanetary disk processes and play a critical role in the earliest stages of planet formation. We analyze vertical gas motions in 14 disks as part of the exoALMA Large Program, focusing on the 12CO J=3-2 and 13CO J=3-2 emission lines. Using discminer to model the Keplerian velocity field, we extract line-of-sight velocity residuals and measure the radial and vertical components of the gas motion. Vertical motions are detected in most disks. Two types of patterns emerge: (1) oscillatory up/down flows, likely linked to instabilities, and (2) transitions from downward to upward motions that we interpret as the base of a disk wind. In most cases, the velocity amplitudes are of a few tens of m/s. Two disks, however, MWC758 and CQ Tau, show two spiral velocity features in their residual maps, red- and blue-shifted, which we interpret as vertical velocities reaching up to 350 m/s (0.7 Cs), consistent with gas motion in eccentric disks. Fast upward motions (up to 500 m/s; 1.8 Cs) is also detected in the outer disk of MWC758. Synthetic observations from (magneto)hydrodynamic simulations validate the reliability of our method. Although strong molecular winds appear to be relatively rare in 12CO and 13CO, our study shows that, when traced by deep high spectral resolution line data, protoplanetary disks exhibit ubiquitous vertical flows. However, their overall velocity structure is highly complex, preventing to identify a coherent, dominant physical mechanism driving the vertical motions across all disks, thus requiring further theoretical investigation.

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arXiv2026

exoALMA XXIII. Estimating Disk and Planet Properties from Dust Morphologies with DBNets2.0

The exoALMA large program provided an unprecedented view of the morphology and kinematics of 15 circumstellar disks, offering a biased but homogenous and well-characterized sample for population-level analysis. Continuum observations revealed numerous dust substructures, known to be potential signatures of embedded planets. We analyze the observed dust morphologies with the simulation-based inference tool DBNets2.0, assuming these are due to embedded planets at fixed locations, to infer the system properties. We estimate the putative planet mass, the disk $α$-viscosity, scale-height, and dust Stokes number that would reproduce 19 substructures in 13 of the 15 exoALMA disks. We compare our results with literature estimates derived with different methods, and find good agreement in most cases. We further explore the implications of the inferred disk properties for accretion, showing that for the Herbig stars in our sample, the implied viscous accretion timescales are too long to account for their observed stellar accretion rates. Regarding planet migration, our results favor inward migration, with only three putative planets expected to migrate outward. Finally, we check for correlations of the inferred disk and planet properties with the disks' gas-to-dust mass ratio, non-axisymmetry index, and masses of the gas, dust, and host stars, finding no remarkable trend.

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arXiv2026

exoALMA XX: Tomographic Detection of Embedded Planets in Protoplanetary Disks

The exoALMA Large Program has revealed a wealth of substructures in the dust and molecular line emission of several protoplanetary discs, suggesting that planet formation may unfold within highly dynamic environments. Using synthetic observations of planet-disc interactions and disc instabilities, we demonstrate how the origin of these substructures can be investigated through a tomographic study of molecular lines, extending the scope of the analysis beyond line-centroid kinematics alone. Our results indicate that with only a few hours of ALMA integration at moderate angular resolution ($0.15''-0.30''$), it is possible to identify the key signatures driven by planets more massive than 0.1% of the stellar mass. These signatures manifest not only as deviations from Keplerian motion but also as localized line broadening, enabling accurate constraints on the orbital radius and azimuthal location of the planets. We further show that a diagnostic based on line skewness in spectrally resolved observations can help distinguish between planetary and instability-driven signatures, owing to the distinct degrees of velocity coherence associated with each mechanism. Finally, we apply this tomographic analysis to exoALMA CO line data for the discs of HD 135344B and MWC 758. In HD 135344B, we identify strongly localized velocity and line-width perturbations, suggesting the possibility of three massive planets embedded in the disc: one at $R=95$ au, exterior to the continuum substructures, and two within dust gaps at $R=41$ au and $R=73$ au. For MWC 758, the dominance of vertical-velocity spirals over localized signatures is consistent with predictions from models of moderate disc eccentricities or warps, potentially induced by a substellar companion in the inner regions of the system.

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arXiv2026

exoALMA XIX: Confirmation of Non-thermal Line Broadening in the DM Tau Protoplanetary Disk

Turbulence is expected to transport angular momentum and drive mass accretion in protoplanetary disks. One way to directly measure turbulent motion in disks is through molecular line broadening. DM Tau is one of only a few disks with claimed detection of nonthermal line broadening of 0.25cs-0.33cs, where cs is the sound speed. Using the radiative transfer code mcfost within a Bayesian inference framework that evaluates over five million disk models to efficiently sample the parameter space, we fit high-resolution (0.15", 28 m s-1) 12CO J = 3-2 observations of DM Tau from the exoALMA Large Program. This approach enables us to simultaneously constrain the disk structure and kinematics, revealing a significant nonthermal contribution to the line width of ~0.4cs, inconsistent with purely thermal motions. Using the CO-based disk structure as a starting point, we reproduce the CS J = 7-6 emission well, demonstrating that the CS (which is more sensitive to nonthermal motions than CO) agrees with the turbulence inferred from the CO fit. Establishing a well-constrained background disk model further allows us to identify residual structures in the moment maps that deviate from the expected emission, revealing localized perturbations that may trace forming planets. This framework provides a powerful general approach for extracting disk structure and nonthermal broadening directly from molecular line data and can be applied to other disks with high-quality observations.

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arXiv2026

Timescales diagnostics for saving viscous and MHD-driven dusty discs from external photoevaporation

The evolution of protoplanetary discs is a function of their internal processes and of their environment. It is unclear if angular momentum is mainly removed viscously or by magnetic winds, or by a combination of the two. While external photoevaporation is expected to influence disc evolution and dispersal, there are observational limitations towards highly irradiated discs. The interplay between these ingredients and their effect on the gas and dust distributions are poorly understood. We investigate the evolution of both the gaseous and solid components of viscous, MHD-wind or hybrid discs, in combination with external FUV-driven mass loss. We test which combinations of parameters protect discs from external irradiation, allowing the solid component to live long enough to allow planet formation to succeed. We run a suite of 1D simulations of smooth discs with varying initial sizes, levels of viscous and MHD-wind stresses modelled via an $α$ parametrisation, and strengths of the external FUV environment. We track disc radii, various lifetime diagnostics, and the amount of dust removed by the photoevaporative wind, as a function of the underlying parameters. The biggest role in determining the fate of discs is played by a combination of its ability to spread radially outwards and the strength of FUV-driven erosion. While MHD wind-driven discs experience less FUV erosion due to the lack of spread, they do not live for longer compared to viscously evolving discs, especially at low-to-moderate FUV fluxes, while higher fluxes yield disc lifetimes that are insensitive to the disc's angular momentum transport mechanism. For the solid component, the biggest role is played by a combination of inward drift and removal by FUV winds. This points to the importance of other physical ingredients, such as disc substructures, even in highly-irradiated disc regions, in order to retain solids.

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arXiv2025

Brightness variability in polar circumbinary disks

In binary systems with a strongly misaligned disk, the central binary stars can travel a significant vertical distance above and below the disk's orbital plane. This can cause large changes in illumination of the disk over the course of the binary orbital period. We use both analytic and radiative transfer models to examine the effect of changes in stellar illumination on the appearance of the disk, particularly in the case of the polar disk HD 98800B. We find that the observed flux from the disk can vary significantly over the binary orbital period, producing a periodically varying lightcurve which peaks twice each binary orbit. The amount of flux variation is strongly influenced by the disk geometry. We suggest that these flux variations produce several observable signatures, and that these observables may provide constraints on different properties of the disk such as its vertical structure, geometry, and cooling rate.

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arXiv2025

Radiative Transfer Modeling of a Shadowed Protoplanetary Disk assisted by a Neural Network

We present observations and detailed modeling of a protoplanetary disk around the T Tauri star, V1098 Sco. Millimeter wavelength data from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) show a ring of large dust grains with a central cavity that is filled with molecular gas. Near-infrared data with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) detect the scattered starlight from the disk surface and reveal a large shadow that extends over it's entire southern half. We model the ALMA continuum and line data to determine the outer disk geometry and the central stellar mass. Using radiative transfer models, we demonstrate that a misaligned inner disk, tilted in both inclination and position angle with respect to the outer disk, can reproduce the salient scattered light features seen with the VLT. Applying an image threshold algorithm to compare disk morphologies and training a neural network on a set of high signal-to-noise models, we forward model the data and determine the inner disk geometry. We find that the rotation axes of the inner and outer disks are misaligned by 38 degrees and constrain the mass and location of a perturbing planetary or substellar companion. The technique of simulation based inference that is illustrated here is broadly applicable for radiative transfer modeling of other objects.

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arXiv2025

exoALMA. XVIII. Interpreting large scale kinematic structures as moderate warping

The exoALMA program gave an unprecedented view of the complex kinematics of protoplanetary disks, revealing diverse structures that remain poorly understood. We show that moderate disk warps ($\sim 0.5-2^\circ$) can naturally explain many of the observed large-scale velocity features with azimuthal wavenumber $m = 1$. Using a simple model, we interpret line-of-sight velocity variations as changes in the projected Keplerian rotation caused by warping of the disk. While not a unique explanation, this interpretation aligns with growing observational evidence that warps are common. We demonstrate that such warps can also produce spiral structures in scattered light and CO brightness temperature, with $\sim 10$ K variations in MWC 758. Within the exoALMA sample, warp properties correlate with stellar accretion rates, suggesting a link between the inner disc and outer disc kinematics. If warps cause large-scale kinematic structure, this has far reaching implications for turbulence, angular momentum transport, and planet formation.

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arXiv2025

SO emission in the dynamically perturbed protoplanetary disks around CQ Tau and MWC 758

We report the serendipitous detection of the SO $J_N=6_5-5_4$ (219.949 GHz) rotational transition in archival Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of the spiral hosting protoplanetary disks around CQ Tau (with $\approx4.9σ$ significance) and MWC 758 (with $\approx3.4σ$ significance). In the former, the SO emission comes in the shape of a ring, arises from the edge of the continuum cavity, and is qualitatively consistent, at the currently available spectral resolution, with being in Keplerian rotation. In the latter, instead, while arising primarily from inside the continuum cavity, the SO emission also extends to the continuum ring(s), and its morphology and kinematics are less clear. We put these sources in the context of the other protoplanetary disks where SO detections have been previously reported in the literature and discuss the possible origins of SO in terms of (thermal) desorption or formation in the gas phase. We argue that these processes might be fostered by dynamical perturbations caused by unseen embedded massive companions, shadows, or late-time infall, thus suggesting a possible link between perturbed dynamics and SO emission in (these) protoplanetary disks. If confirmed, our interpretation would imply that chemical evolution timescales could be significantly shorter in these systems than is commonly assumed, indicating that dynamical perturbations might influence the composition of newborn (proto-)planets by altering the volatile makeup of their formation environment.

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