Anibal Sierra

I study the dust and gas properties in protoplanetary disks from a theoretical point of view in order to explain interferometric observations. I am specially interested in disks with vortex and/or rings structures where dust grains can be trapped and grow. My work has focused on the analysis of continuum dust emission at millimeter wavelengths (ALMA, VLA) taking into account the scattering effects. From these analysis, the dust surface density, temperature, and the size of the dust grains can be determined from the multi-wavelength observations. Once the dust properties are determined, I have used simple analytical models including dust trapping in vortices and rings in order to explain the inferred structures.