The theory of kinks – I. A semi-analytic model of velocity perturbations due to planet–disc interaction

A new technique to detect protoplanets is by observing the kinematics of the surrounding gas. Gravitational perturbations from a planet produce peculiar `kinks' in channel maps of different gas species. In this paper, we show that such kinks can be reproduced using semi-analytic models for the velocity perturbation induced by a planet. In doing so we i) confirm that the observed kinks are caused by the planet-induced wake; ii) show how to quantify the planet mass from the kink amplitude; in particular, we show that the kink amplitude scales with the square root of the planet mass for channels far from the planet velocity, steepening to linear as the channels approach the planet; iii) show how to extend the theory to include the effect of damping, which may be needed in order to have localized kinks.