EXPLORING THE ORIGIN OF SUBSTRUCTURES IN PLANET FORMING DISCS.THE ROLE OF PROTOPLANETS AND OF GRAVITATIONAL INSTABILITIES

Recent high resolution and high sensitivity observations of protoplanetary discs are showing us peculiar substructures, such as spirals, gaps and rings. Disc hydrodynamical instabilities, such as gravitational instabilities induced by the disc self-gravity, and embedded protoplanets have been proposed to be responsible for their formation. However, the origin of these substructures is still very debated, in particular it is not clear how their morphological and kinematical features depend on the disc mass, on the embedded companion mass and on the coupling between the gas and the dust component of the disc. This project aims at deepen our knowledge of the processes that originate the observed substructures, focusing on these three aspects.