Abstract

Turbulence within protoplanetary disks plays a crucial role in setting the temperature and density structure, as well as influencing the growth and migration of planetesimals. Despite its importance there are few observational constraints on its strength, leaving open the possibility that it may inhibit planetesimal growth by preventing dust grains from settling to the midplane or enhance planetesimal growth within localized turbulent vortices. Here we present a search for turbulence around the nearby Herbig Ae star HD 163296. Building on previous work that detected turbulence within this disk, we use ALMA data that can spatially resolve vertical structure, which is highly degenerate with turbulent broadening, providing stronger constraints on the vertical temperature profile than was previously available. This new data, combined with a Bayesian analysis of the parameter space, can put physically meaningful constraints on the strength of the turbulence within this system and its role in the planet formation process.

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