Migration of the snow line in protoplanetary disks

The snow line is the location in protoplanetary disks beyond which water ice condenses. Knowing where the snow line should be is fundamental for understanding how and where planets of different compositions form. The classical theory of solar system formation assumed that the solar nebula's snow line occurred around the current position of the asteroid belt. However, models have shown that the snow line's location is in fact highly uncertain and depends on the disk's heating and cooling processes. Its location can even change as planet formation proceeds because the solids in the disks, which are the building blocks of planets, can control the efficiencies of both disk heating and cooling. In this talk, I will present our recent efforts to model the coupled evolution of solids and the snow line in protoplanetary disks. In particular, I will highlight the possibility that the solar nebula's snow line could have migrated inward across Earth's current orbit during the early stages of solar system formation.