Constrain the gas-gap depth and viscosity of WISPIT 2c

Constrain the gas-gap depth produced by WISPIT 2c in the WISPIT 2 protoplanetary disk using observations with sufficient spatial resolution to distinguish the gap from surrounding structures.

Background

The DALI thermal-chemical model attempts to connect the observed CO isotopologue emission to the radial gas surface-density structure. The gap associated with WISPIT 2c is close to the star and is not sufficiently resolved by the available observations.

Consequently, the depth of the inner gap cannot be used to test planet–disk interaction prescriptions or to constrain the local disk viscosity in the same way as the better-resolved WISPIT 2b gap.

References

The depth of the inner gap, created by planet 2c, cannot be constrained at the observed spatial resolution, as indicated by the hatched region in the plot.

— Planetary gas gaps and kinematic signatures in the planet forming disk around WISPIT 2  (2609.05230 - Marel et al., 4 Sep 2026) in Methods, Section 2.4, subsection “Thermal-chemical modeling”