The Turbulent Life of Planet-Forming Disks

Planets are common around other stars, but much is still unknown about how exactly planets are created within the thin disks of gas and dust swirling around young stars. One important component of these planet forming environments is the turbulence, which influences processes ranging from the collisional growth of small dust grains to the ability of gas-giant planets to open gaps in the disk. Despite this importance, few direct observational constraints on its strength exist. I will report on our efforts to constrain turbulence using observations of molecular line emission from the ALMA radio telescope array in Chile. Our finding that weak turbulence is common, but not universal, has important implications for the physical process driving turbulence, as well as to how planets form.