Infrared observation of protoplanetary discs revealed that their structure is far more complicated than the oversimplified axisymmetric distribution, which might be connected to the phenomena that produces planets. We know that protoplanetary discs have several million year lifetime serving relatively short-lived cradle for planets. As of today, we discovered more than a thousand extrasolar planets, thus planet formation must be a frequent process. However, current theories of planet formation have several caveats, such as the too slow process of solid core-growth or too fast inward migration of low mass planet-cores.
Related research projects:- Vortices in protoplanetary discs
- Vortex aided planet-core trapping
- Parametric viscosity
- Plnetary migration
Modelling the interactions of dusty particles with planets embedded in disks as well as the late phase of planet assembly are very important aspects of planet formation. In order to model the gravitational interaction of planets with dust and planetesimals I developed a fully GPU-based direct N-body integrator HIPERION. During the development it turns out that the so-called direct integrator scheme is required to model "dynamically" old systems such as protoplanetary and debris disk. Therefore, harnessing the power of GPUs seems to be essential.
Related research projects:My former research interests were the observation possibilities of newly born planets by means of IR spectroscopy which was presented in my PhD thesis. As molecular lines - especially CO - are frequently observed in protoplanetary discs, their infrared spectra serves as an excellent tool to map the dynamical phenomena occurred in protoplanetary discs. This dynamics are strongly perturbed by high-mass planets which might be observed by means of distorted molecular lines. An other source of molecular line distortion might be the eccentricity that might be developed in protoplanetary discs in binary systems.
Related research projects:I am also interested in astronomical observational techniques such as CCD photometry with high angular resolution. Since the Earth atmospheric turbulence distorts the images taken by telescopes, we have to handle this problem by aquisiting images with high resolution. The first attempt to circumvent this problem was the development of speckle interferometry by which we are able to image binaries with apparent separation below the atmospheric seeing. An other novel method was the development of lucky imaging by which we are able to freeze out the atmospheric turbulence. A couple of years ago i was involved in the development and implementation of such techniques in our observatory at Piszkéstető.
Related research projects:I am fond of instrument design and control softwares. I had a fortune to be a member of a small group at Konkoly Observatory which is aimed at developing a complete data acquisition system based on an EMCCD camera capable to take millisecond exposure series without read time lag. I also developed the all sky camera and weather station acquisition system mounted on Piszkéstető Observatory.
Related research projects in this field: