The inner regions of planet forming disks surrounding young stars are key to our understanding of the formation of rocky, earth-like planets and super-earths. We know from exoplanet surveys that such planets are abundantly present around low mass stars. Rocky planets are essential ingredients in the quest for life outside the solar system. Understanding their properties and formation history is key to our efforts to put the solar system in perspective.
We can now for the first time spatially resolve the inner 10 au of planet forming disks (e.g. ALMA, SPHERE/GPI, VLTI/PIONIER/GRAVITY/ MATISSE) and will obtain spectra of the warm gas in the inner disk regions (JWST, CRIRES+) that allows us to characterize their structure, dust and gas content and composition. Recent and ongoing surveys (e.g. Corot, Kepler, TESS) provide data to study many rocky exoplanets and exoplanetary architectures. These two key phases, the initial disk stage and the final planet properties, are only emerging now.
We will use current models and observations to link these two key phases allowing us to confront theories and observations of planet formation with the observed outcome of the planet formation process. Finally, we will compare this to the solar system for which increasingly quantitative data from exploration missions, meteorite analysis and remote sensing are becoming available.