Tracing Accretion onto Herbig Ae/Be Stars using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

Abstract

The detection and characterization of accretion processes in the disks surrounding young stars may be directly relevant to studies of planet formation. Especially the study of systems with very low accretion rates (<< 10^{-10} M_sun yr^{-1}) is important, since at those rates radial mixing becomes inefficient and disk material will have to be dissipated into larger bodies at its present location. In these proceedings, we compare the different methods of tracing accretion onto Herbig Ae/Be stars and conclude that high-resolution infrared spectroscopy is currently the only reliable method that offers the required sensitivity to shed light on this problem.