PDS 70: A Transition Disk Sculpted by a Single Planet

The wide, deep cavities of transition disks are often believed to have been hollowed out by nascent planetary systems. PDS 70, a similar to 5 Myr old transition disk system in which a multi-Jupiter-mass planet candidate at 22 au coexists with a similar to 30 au gas and similar to 60 au dust-continuum gap, provides a valuable case study for this hypothesis. Using the PEnGUIn hydrodynamics code, we simulate the orbital evolution and accretion of PDS 70b in its natal disk. When the accreting planet reaches about 2.5 Jupiter masses, it spontaneously grows in eccentricity and consumes material from a wide swathe of the PDS 70 disk; radiative transfer post-processing with DALI shows that this accurately reproduces the observed gap profile. Our results demonstrate that super-Jupiter planets can single-handedly carve out transition disk cavities, and indicate that the high eccentricities measured for such giants may be a natural consequence of disk planet interaction.