Untitled - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de l'Observatoire de Grenoble

Chapter 7
Future Research Directions
7.1 Research Plans
Over the last few years, since the creation of FOST in 2003, we have progressively refocussed our activities
by including the unifying long-term goal of ”planet formation” to our present goal of understanding ”star
formation”. Recall that the acronym FOST stands for ”Star and Planet Formation” in its contracted form.
Because such a re-orientation takes time and must be smooth to maintain a good coherence within a larger
team, not everyone in FOST works directly on ”planet formation” today. We are convinced this is the right
way because we foresee that our broad range of expertise will lead to innovative breakthroughs in the long run,
breakthroughs that would otherwise have been missed.
Indeed, because of the richness of the scientific background in FOST, we are considering the problem from a
number of independent and interesting directions: be it from the direct search for planets around main sequence
stars and in younger star forming regions, be it the study of proto-planetary disks where planets are thought
to form, or be it the impact of mass-loss on the disk structure, possibly changing the conditions for planet
formation and migration, for example.
This shift in perspective for FOST is rather new. As a consequence, our work should largely keep going
in the current directions for the next few years, i.e., largely into the 2007-2010 period we are considering
here. Therefore, a large fraction of our forecasted activities has been described in the previous chapter. It is
nevertheless useful to recall a few directions we are engaged in and to raise a few questions that will, undoubtedly,
drive our research in the longer term.
In the field of Star Formation We plan to take advantage of JETSET (starting fall 2005) to make advances
in the 2D and 3D numerical simulations of the magnetically mediated star-disk interaction zone (in relation
with SHERPAS). The goal is to confront realistic models with our observations. On the observational side, our
involvement in programmes using 2 powerful spectropolarimeters, ESPADONS at CFHT and NARVAL at TBL
(soon), should allow us to obtain the first, and long awaited for, maps of the magnetic field in this zone. Today
this field is assumed dipolar, but just how close to reality is this hypothesis? The use of X-rays to probe that
zone is original and we will benefit also from the rare expertise we have in this field.
Clearly, the scientific exploitation of AMBER, NACO, and WIRCAM is also at the center of our activities.
The expected returns from these new instruments has been described before, but WIRCAM should allow us
to identify planet-mass objects in nearby star forming regions and estimate the shape of the IMF down to a
few Jupiter masses only, a key piece of information to constrain the star formation mechanisms. NAOS and
AMBER will be extensively used to map disk, from their inner parts (AMBER) to signatures of large scale
asymmetries (NACO), possibly tracing planets. The interpretation of these observations will require continued
efforts to improve our disk models and radiative transfer tools. The need for dynamical models is expected to
increase with time, together with the quality of data available from these instruments.
A long term target for these studies is the preparation for Herschel and ALMA that will provide the necessary
101