Abstract
We study the properties of dust in disks to constrain models of planet
formation. We measure and analyze the spectral index for the dust
continuum emission at millimeter wavelengths for a sample of 24 young
disks in the Upper Sco star-forming region. We do this by combining data
taken with the ALMA telescope at wavelengths of 2.87 mm and 0.88 mm.
Since the age of this region is ∼ 5 - 10 Myr, these results can
constrain the properties of small solids in disks at the end of their
lifetime. We examine whether dust trapping, which is key to the
formation of planetesimals, happens only in much younger disks or if it
is efficient all the way towards the end of the disk life cycle. Our
results indicate that dust traps are present also in the relatively old
disks in our sample, indicating that protoplanetary disks have the
potential to form planetesimals during their entire lifetime. Our
analysis also quantifies the effects of scattering by dust of the disk
emission, a mechanism that has been recently proposed as potentially
important to determine the fluxes of protoplanetary disks even at
sub-mm/mm wavelengths. From preliminary results, based on the
state-of-the-art radiative transfer code RADMC-3d, we infer that
scattering is not effective for optically thin disk models, but could
potentially play a significant role for optically thick models.