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How protoplanetary discs evolve remains an unanswered question. Competingtheories of viscosity and magnetohydrodynamic disc winds have been put forwardas the drivers of angular momentum transport in protoplanetary discs. These twomodels predict distinct differences in the disc mass, radius and accretionrates over time, that could be used to distinguish them. However thatexpectation is built on models that do not include another important process -photoevaporation, both internally by the host star and externally byneighbouring stars. In this work we produce numerical models of protoplanetarydiscs including viscosity, magnetohydrodynamic disc winds, and internal andexternal photoevaporation. We find that even weak levels of externalphotoevaporation can significantly affect the evolution of protoplanetarydiscs, influencing the observable features such as disc radii, that mightotherwise distinguish between viscous and wind driven discs. Including internalphotoevaporation further suppresses differences in evolution between viscousand wind driven discs. This makes it much more difficult than previouslyanticipated, to use observations of nearby star forming regions to determinewhether discs are viscous or wind driven. Interestingly we find that evolvedprotoplanetary discs in intermediate FUV environments may be the best cases fordifferentiating whether they evolve through viscosity or magnetohydrodynamicdisc winds. Ultimately this work demonstrates the importance of understandingwhat are the key evolutionary processes and including as many of those aspossible when exploring the evolution of protoplanetary discs.

Photoevaporation obfuscates the distinction between wind and viscous angular momentum transport in protoplanetary discs