The MINDS gas-rich debris disk sample observed with JWST/MIRI MRS

Debris disks are the remnants of planet formation and therefore extremely important for understanding exoplanet system architecture. They were long thought to be completely depleted in gas, different from protoplanetary disks. In recent years, however, detections of CO gas in a number of debris disks has caused questions about the nature and origin of this class of gas-rich debris disks. A sample of five CO-rich debris disks has now been observed with JWST's MIRI Medium Resolution Spectrograph (MRS) as part of the MINDS (MIRI mid-INfrared Disk Survey) GTO program. Our program resulted in high quality spectra from 5 to 27 micron, which are spatially resolved for most of the targets providing a unique opportunity to gain new insights into these objects.

For the first time this data allows us to conduct a sensitive search for mid-IR atomic and molecular emission lines and dust features in debris disks for which CO gas was detected with ALMA. It also allows us to map the spatial distribution of the dust as a function of wavelength for most of our targets, bridging the gap between optical/near infrared imaging observation and sub-millimeter observations. In this talk we present the first exciting results and highlights coming out of this JWST survey.