School Welcomes Professor Charles Law
Assistant Professor Charles Law is a new faculty member in the School of Physics and Astronomy and the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics. He arrives from the University of Virginia and has already begun mentoring graduate student Alexis Riggs, who recently joined his Planetary Origins Lab. Law takes a cross-disciplinary approach, combining physics, chemistry, and astronomy to understand how planetary systems emerge and evolve.
Law notes, “My research seeks to answer some big scientific questions. What do young, forming planets look like? How unique are Earth and our solar system in the universe? Are the ingredients for life present in other planetary systems, and ultimately, are we alone? These are questions humanity has been asking for millennia, but we now have an exciting opportunity to answer them quantitatively for the first time.”
Planet formation begins in a collapsing cloud of dense interstellar gas and dust, which eventually settles into a flattened, rotating protoplanetary disk. In these disks, tiny dust grains grow, gas and solids accumulate, and planets take shape. As planets are born, they also transform their surroundings. Their gravity carves gaps and sculpts rings in the disks, redistributing the material that astronomers observe. These structures offer valuable clues about the planets developing within them, allowing researchers to study this dynamic, interconnected process.
Law investigates every step of this sequence, from the earliest stages of formation to mature exoplanets (planets orbiting stars beyond our Sun) seen millions of years later. By connecting observations of young disks with the diversity of known exoplanets and the history of our own solar system, his research aims to determine when, where, and how planets form, and how the initial conditions and changing structure of a disk influence the types of planets it produces.
To address these questions, Law draws on an array of cutting-edge observational facilities and computational tools. Radio telescopes such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Very Large Array (VLA) allow him to map the gas and dust in planet-forming disks. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) probes the hot inner regions closest to young stars, while optical and infrared facilities like the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) offer complementary views of disk structure and signatures of protoplanets still forming in their natal disks. He combines these observations with detailed computer simulations to model the physical and chemical processes shaping these systems, helping turn astronomical data into a clearer picture of how planets and their environments evolve together.
Law is actively looking for students to help build his group and welcomes those from a broad range of academic fields. He emphasizes, “The interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of our work means that students with backgrounds in physics, astronomy, engineering, and earth and environmental sciences all bring unique and valuable expertise to tackle some of the biggest questions in planet formation.”
Students with computational or data-science skills are particularly encouraged to get involved. Planned upgrades to ALMA and other telescopes promise to open new windows into planet formation while generating increasingly large and complex datasets. Realizing the full potential of these observations will require innovative, data-driven approaches. “The discovery space will depend on our ability to efficiently identify and analyze the most scientifically valuable information,” Law says. “We are excited to work with students who will lead the development of new tools to benefit the entire astronomical community.”