Assembling Planetary Systems in Starlight-Heated Disks of Gas and Dust
Abstract
Solid materials' distribution during planet formation is governed by the gas flows in protostellar disks through the drag force. In turn, solids in the form of dust particles affect the movements of the gas. We will describe numerical radiation-hydrodynamical results illustrating how such feedback works in two situations. At distances where Kepler found many planets around mature stars, the silicate sublimation front causes a steep temperature drop, and the nearby ionization front makes a steep density rise, leading to a local pressure maximum that acts as both a trap for pebbles and an attractor for young planets' orbital migration. In protostellar disks' outer reaches, at distances where planets are directly imaged around older stars, dust absorbs the starlight and rapidly re-radiates in the infrared, enabling the vertical shear instability to produce turbulence that jostles the solid particles while carving a gap in the gas. The gap triggers Rossby wave instability, leading to a vortex where the particles concentrate. The interplay between solids and gas in starlight-heated protostellar disks thus determines where particles collect to form planets, and how the planets' orbits evolve.
- Publication:
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43rd COSPAR Scientific Assembly. Held 28 January - 4 February
- Pub Date:
- January 2021
- Bibcode:
- 2021cosp...43E.131T