Planet formation bursts at the borders of the dead zone in 2D numerical simulations of circumstellar disks

By Wladimir Lyra, Anders Johansen, A. Zsom, H. Klahr, N. Piskunov. 2009

144 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Context. As accretion in protoplanetary disks is enabled by turbulent viscosity, the border between active and inactive (dead) zones constitutes a location where there is an abrupt change in the accretion flow. The gas accumulation that ensues triggers the Rossby wave instability, which in turn saturates into anticyclonic vortices. It has been suggested that the trapping of solids within them leads to a burst of planet formation on very short timescales. Aims. We study in the formation and evolution of the vortices in greater detail, focusing on the implications for the dynamics of embedded solid particles and planet formation. Methods. We performed two-dimensional global simulations of the dynamics of gas and solids in a non-magnetized thin protoplanetary disk with the Pencil code. We used multiple particle species of radius 1, 10, 30, and 100 cm. We computed the particles' gravitational interaction by a particle-mesh method, translating the particles' number density into surface density and computing the corresponding self-gravitational potential via fast Fourier transforms. The dead zone is modeled as a region of low viscosity. Adiabatic and locally isothermal equations of state are used. Results. The Rossby wave instability is triggered under a variety of conditions, thus making vortex formation a robust process. Inside the vortices, fast accumulation of solids occurs and the particles collapse into objects of planetary mass on timescales as short as five orbits. Because the drag force is size-dependent, aerodynamical sorting ensues within the vortical motion, and the first bound structures formed are composed primarily of similarly-sized particles. In addition to erosion due to ram pressure, we identify gas tides from the massive vortices as a disrupting agent of formed protoplanetary embryos. We find evidence that the backreaction of the drag force from the particles onto the gas modifies the evolution of the Rossby wave instability, with vortices being launched only at later times if this term is excluded from the momentum equation. Even though the gas is not initially gravitationally unstable, the vortices can grow to Q ≈ 1 in locally isothermal runs, which halts the inverse cascade of energy towards smaller wavenumbers. As a result, vortices in models without self-gravity tend to rapidly merge towards a $m = 2$ or $m =1 $ mode, while models with self-gravity retain dominant higher order modes ($m = 4$ or $m = 3$) for longer times. Non-selfgravitating disks thus show fewer and stronger vortices. We also estimate the collisional velocity history of the particles that compose the most massive embryo by the end of the simulation, finding that the vast majority of them never experienced a collision with another particle at speeds faster than 1 m s -1 . This result lends further support to previous studies showing that vortices provide a favorable environment for planet formation.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/767c1c1b13f8e3f22d25ff5f7ee394e974df2757

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Citations in the corpus

Possible planet-forming regions on submillimetre images (2011, background): “Lyra et al. (2009) found that assuming adiabatic equation of state for the gas, the pressure bump (that gives rise to RWI) sharpens considerably compared to their locally isothermal models, due to the high temperatures associated with compression.”
Adding particle collisions to the formation of asteroids and Kuiper belt objects via streaming instabilities (2011, methodology): “Lyra et al. (2009) applied a similar trick to subtract off the entire (Keplerian plus peculiar) gas velocity from the particle velocity.”
Gaps, Rings, and Non-Axisymmetric Structures in Protoplanetary Disks - From Simulations to ALMA Observations (2014, background): “Another possibility was presented by Varnière & Tagger (2006), Lyra et al. (2009a), Regály et al. (2012), and Faure et al. (2014): the surface density enhancement and following vortex formation was generated by the increase of accretion stress in the outer disk caused by the…”
Close-in planetesimal formation by pile-up of drifting pebbles (2016, background): “…disc structure and introduce pressure bumps that make it possible to obtain such enhancements: the zonal flows (Johansen et al. 2011; Dittrich et al. 2013), vortices (Raettig et al. 2015; Surville et al. 2016), dead zone edges (Lyra et al. 2009), and planet-disc interactions (Ayliffe et al. 2012).”
MILLIMETER-WAVE POLARIZATION OF PROTOPLANETARY DISKS DUE TO DUST SCATTERING (2015, background): “The lopsided continuum emission with the smooth gas distribution may be a signature of dust accumulation by gas density enhancement created by such as vortex (e.g., Lyra et al. 2009).”