Related papers: Gravitational Instabilities in Circumstellar Disks
Observational studies show that the probability of finding gas giant planets around a star increases with the star's metallicity. Our latest simulations of disks undergoing gravitational instabilities (GIs) with realistic radiative cooling…
Interstellar turbulence is driven over a wide range of scales by processes including spiral arm instabilities and supernovae, and it affects the rate and morphology of star formation, energy dissipation, and angular momentum transfer in…
We use time-dependent, one-dimensional disc models to investigate the evolution of protostellar discs that form through the collapse of molecular cloud cores and in which the primary transport mechanism is self-gravity. We assume that these…
Young protostellar discs are likely to be both self-gravitating, and to support grain growth to sizes where the particles decoupled from the gas. This combination could lead to short-wavelength fragmentation of the solid component in…
We investigate the gravitational instability of galactic discs, treating stars and cold interstellar gas as two distinct components, and taking into account the phenomenology of turbulence in the interstellar medium (ISM), i.e. the…
We investigate the formation of planetesimals via the gravitational instability of solids that have settled to the midplane of a circumstellar disk. Vertical shear between the gas and a subdisk of solids induces turbulent mixing which…
This review introduces physical processes in protoplanetary disks relevant to accretion and the initial stages of planet formation. After a brief overview of the observational context, I introduce the elementary theory of disk structure and…
Our previous linear analysis presents a new instability driven by dust coagulation in protoplanetary disks. The coagulation instability has the potential to concentrate dust grains into rings and assist dust coagulation and planetesimal…
We present simulations of the non-linear evolution of streaming instabilities in protoplanetary disks. The two components of the disk, gas treated with grid hydrodynamics and solids treated as superparticles, are mutually coupled by drag…
We present two-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of self-gravitating protostellar disks subject to axisymmetric infall from envelopes and irradiation from the central star, to explore disk fragmentation due to gravitational instability…
Previous simulations of self-gravitating protostellar disks have shown that, once developed, gravitational instabilities are enhanced by cooling the disk constantly during its evolution (Pickett et al. 2002). These earlier calculations…
Planetary systems form in gas-dust protoplanetary discs via the growth of solid bodies. In this paper, we show that the most intriguing stage of such growth --- namely, the transformation of 1-10 m boulders into kilometre-sized…
Star formation proceeds via the collapse of a molecular cloud core over multiple dynamical timescales. Turbulence within cores results in a spatially non-uniform angular momentum of the cloud, causing a stochastic variation in orientation…
We discuss the effects of the magnetic field observed in molecular clouds on the process of star formation, concentrating on the phase of gravitational collapse of low-mass dense cores, cradles of sunlike stars. We summarize recent analytic…
Recent ALMA observations on disk substructures suggest the presence of embedded protoplanets in a large number disks. The primordial configurations of these planetary systems can be deduced from the morphology of the disk substructure and…
The turbulent environment from which stars form may lead to misalignment between the stellar spin and the remnant protoplanetary disk. By using hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic simulations, we demonstrate that a wide range of stellar…
Planet-forming disks are fundamental objects thought to be inherited from large scale rotation, through the conservation of angular momentum during the collapse of a prestellar dense core. We investigate the possibility for a protostellar…
Gravitational instability (GI) features in several aspects of protostellar disk evolution, most notably in angular momentum transport, fragmentation, and the outbursts exemplified by FU Ori and EX Lupi systems. The outer regions of…
The central region of a circumstellar disk is difficult to resolve in global numerical simulations of collapsing cloud cores, but its effect on the evolution of the entire disk can be significant. We use numerical hydrodynamics simulations…
Understanding the physics of how stars form is a highly-prioritized goal of modern Astrophysics, in part because star formation is linked to both galactic dynamics on large scales and to the formation of planets on small scales. It is…