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R. Millan-Gabet (Harvard-CfA)
In recent years long baseline optical interferometers have achieved the near-infrared sensitivities needed to conduct observations of young stellar systems. First results from the IOTA and PTI, reviewed in this talk, show that the close environments of young stars of intermediate mass, the Herbig Ae/Be stars, are readily resolvable, and have provided the first direct information at spatial scales corresponding to the inner regions of the putative accretion disks (<1AU). This new data has already challenged conventional expectations of the accretion disk scenario, by finding surprisingly large characteristic near-infrared sizes, and by failing to detect non-circularly symmetric brightness distributions. Clearly, the high angular resolution data provided by optical interferometers, particularly when dense spatial frequency coverage becomes available, in conjunction with spectroscopic probes, can potentially solve the long standing question of the precise physical properties of these pre-planetary environments.