Star Formation and Extrasolar Planets: Science Opportunities for Future ELTs
Karl Stapelfeldt^1
1 JPL/Caltech

Future extremely large telescopes will be the engines of major progress in the fields of star and planet formation, brown dwarfs, and extrasolar planets. Their throughput will enable spectroscopic studies of the structure of brown dwarf atmospheres; reveal the composition and kinematics of protoplanetary disks; extend radial velocity searches for extrasolar planets to fainter stars and lower masses; and characterize the surfaces of the most distant Kuiper Belt objects. Their resolution will allow us to resolve and track the orbits of close binary young stars and brown dwarfs, establishing their dynamical masses and calibrating their evolutionary tracks; probe the inner region of young stellar object disks, resolving the jet collimation region in accreting systems and disk inner holes in more evolved ones; and move the horizon for stellar companion searches inward to 30 mas, enabling the direct detection of hot young planets orbiting 5 AU from young T Tauri stars. The high contrast imaging capabilities of future ELTs is uncertain. Warm or self-luminous giant planets will be within their reach, including several objects already identified today by radial velocity surveys. The detection of cold planets seen by reflected light is a severe instrumental challenge, and the feasibility of such observations with ELTs remains to be demonstrated. To meet this challenge, significant new proof-of-concept efforts will be needed using high contrast adaptive optics on existing telescopes, in addition to careful attention to the specialized requirements of ultra-high contrast imaging in ELT design.

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