Abstract

The structure of debris disks carries an abundance of information, such as on the presence of embedded bodies and the dynamical history of the planetary system. Edge-on debris disks offer a unique opportunity to simultaneously access the radial and vertical distribution of material, however recovering either distribution in an unbiased way is challenging. In this talk, I present a non-parametric method to recover the face-on surface brightness profile and height profile given an observation of an azimuthally symmetric, edge-on debris disk. Compared to parametric approaches, this method not only avoids biasing the fitted profiles towards an assumed functional form, but also provides more realistic uncertainties on the underlying model. I also present results from applying the algorithm to ALMA and mid-infrared observations, comparing our results with those from parametric studies for each example and discussing the implications of the new structural information.