Related papers: How strong are the Rossby vortices?
It is known that an embedded massive planet will open a gap in a protoplanetary disc via angular momentum exchange with the disc material. The resulting surface density profile of the disc is investigated for one dimensional and two…
We address the cosmological evolution of violent gravitational instability in high-redshift, massive, star-forming galactic discs. To this aim, we integrate in time the equations of mass and energy conservation under self-regulated…
Numerical simulations are presented to study the stability of gaps opened by giant planets in 3D self-gravitating disks. In weakly self-gravitating disks, a few vortices develop at the gap edge and merge on orbital time-scales. The result…
Many dynamical interactions can induce eccentricities in astrophysical accretion disks. Disk eccentricities in turn seed a variety of instabilities, even in ideal hydrodynamics. We use 3D nonlinear simulations and 2+1D linear calculations…
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…
Attempts to understand the dynamics of warped astrophysical discs have garnered significant attention, largely motivated by the growing catalogue of observed distorted systems. Previous studies have shown that the evolution of the warp is…
Many accretion discs have been found to be distorted: either warped due a misalignment in the system, or non-circular as a result of orbital eccentricity or tidal deformation by a binary companion. Warped, eccentric, and tidally distorted…
Numerical simulations of global three-dimensional (3D), self-gravitating discs with a gap opened by an embedded planet are presented. The simulations are customised to examine planetary gap stability. Previous results, obtained by Lin &…
We present results from a suite of three-dimensional global hydrodynamic simulations which show that spiral density waves propagating in circumstellar disks are unstable to the growth of a parametric instability that leads to break-down of…
Large-amplitude current-driven plasma instabilities, which can transition to the Buneman instability, were observed in one-dimensional (1D) simulations to generate high-energy backstreaming ions. We investigate the saturation of…
We examine the nonlinear development of unstable magnetosonic waves driven by a background radiative flux -- the Radiation-Driven Magneto-Acoustic Instability (RMI, a.k.a. the "photon bubble" instability). The RMI may serve as a persistent…
This paper explores the driving of low-level hydrodynamical activity in protoplanetary-disc dead zones. A small adverse radial entropy gradient, ordinarily stabilised by rotation, excites oscillatory convection (`convective overstability')…
The wave instability acts in astrophysical plasmas to redistribute energy and momentum in the absence of frequent collisions. There are many different types of waves, and it is important to quantify the wave energy density and growth rate…
Resonant drag instabilities (RDIs) are a novel type of dust/fluid instability relevant to a diverse range of astrophysical environments. They are driven by a resonant interaction between streaming dust and waves in a background medium,…
The streaming instability, a promising mechanism to drive planetesimal formation in dusty protoplanetary discs, relies on aerodynamic drag naturally induced by the background radial pressure gradient. This gradient should vary in disks, but…
We examine the evolution of the Parker instability in galactic disks using 3D numerical simulations. We consider a local Cartesian box section of a galactic disk, where gas, magnetic fields and cosmic rays are all initially in a…
Astrophysical discs which are sufficiently massive and cool are linearly unstable to the formation of axisymmetric structures. In practice, linearly stable discs of surface density slightly below the threshold needed for this instability…
We investigate the effect of inertial particles dispersed in a circular patch of finite radius on the stability of a two-dimensional Rankine vortex in semi-dilute dusty flows. Unlike the particle-free case where no unstable modes exist, we…
We identify a new dust instability that occurs in warped discs. The instability is caused by the oscillatory gas motions induced by the warp in the bending wave regime. We first demonstrate the instability using a local 1D (vertical) toy…
The stability of a rotating fluid disk to the formation of spiral arms is studied in the tightwinding approximation in the linear regime. The dispersion relation for spirals that was derived by Bertin et al. is shown to contain a new,…