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Over the first few million years of their life, the evolution of young stars is governed by the interaction with their surrounding protoplanetary disks. This interaction regulates the exchange of mass and angular momentum between the star and the disk, with a direct influence on the formation and migration dynamics of close-in planets. While observing facilities like ALMA have revealed the complex geometries of the outer disk regions in exquisite detail, the spatial scales relevant to star-disk interaction are often too small to be resolved with the same techniques. However, detailed physical reconstructions of the inner disk dynamics can be achieved by mapping the characteristic variability signatures of young star-disk systems across the wavelength spectrum. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the manifold time domain behaviors that pre-main sequence stars of different mass may exhibit over timescales of hours to years, as seen through the eyes of high-precision, space-borne observatories like Kepler/K2. I will then discuss what these observations can reveal regarding the physics of young stars and the interplay between the star, the disk, and any nascent planets. I will also present the Early eVolution Explorer (EVE), a new NASA Small Explorer mission concept that is being developed by an international team of researchers between the USA, Europe, and Australia to investigate the earliest stages in the co-evolution of young stars and planets. |
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