title: High-Contrast Imaging Polarimetry of Protoplanetary Disks with Subaru

authors: Motohide Tamura and the SEEDS/HiCIAO/AO team

abstract: Recent direct imaging has discovered a population of massive (a few MJ to ~15 MJ or even more massive) planets orbiting at outer regions (r>~10 AU) around their host stars. It is difficult to form those planets with the standard core-accretion model or even with the gravitational instability model; therefore their origin is controversial. One of the ways to approach to study their origin is to observationally reveal the details of the protoplanetary disks at the same radial regions where such outer planets reside. We are currently conducting an imaging polarization survey of nearby young stars with the newly developed HiCIAO coronagraph on the Subaru 8.2-m telescope (the SEEDS project) and detected "fine structures" such as gaps and dips within the scale of our Solar System. In this talk, I will summarize those SEEDS disk results and discuss the various features discovered as a signpost of planets already formed or forming in the disks.