Brianna Zawadzki, Wesleyan University

Debris disks are tenuous reservoirs of dust and gas around main sequence stars which probe the critical time domain between planet formation (in protoplanetary disks at ≲10 Myr) and mature planetary systems (mostly detected at ages of Gyrs). Millimeter wavelength observations are particularly important for dust characterization; larger grains probed by these observations trace the dynamics of the system and are not strongly affected by radiation pressure and stellar winds. Dozens of debris disks have been imaged with ALMA at low resolution, but only a handful of sources have previously been observed with sensitivities and resolutions sufficient to detect substructure like rings and gaps. This is especially true for characterizing the vertical structure of debris disks, which requires high-resolution observations of highly inclined disks. Well-resolved vertical structure measurements at millimeter wavelengths provide direct insight into the degree of dynamical excitation within the disk, enabling us to infer the presence of a wide range of planets (down to Earth masses) and determine the prevalence of Neptune-like migration histories. The ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures (ARKS) is observing 18 debris disks at high resolution, including 8 highly inclined (i > 75°) sources. We will present the preliminary results of the ARKS vertical structure analysis, using this sample of high-resolution observations to measure debris disk scale heights, constrain their total masses, and confirm or rule out the presence of planets.