Related papers: Laboratory Experiments on the Motion of Dense Dust…
We argue that impact velocities between dust grains with sizes less than $\sim 0.1$ $\mu m$ in molecular cloud cores are dominated by drift arising from ambipolar diffusion. This effect is due to the size dependence of the dust coupling to…
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…
The results of a numerical study of the growth of solid particles, ranging from 1 micron to 1 millimeter in size, in the vicinity of an azimuthally symmetric density enhancement of a protostellar disk are presented. It is shown that the…
Planetesimals in gaseous protoplanetary disks may grow by collecting dust particles. Hydrodynamical studies show that small particles generally avoid collisions with the planetesimals because they are entrained by the flow around them. This…
We use a suite of 3D simulations of star-forming molecular clouds, with and without stellar feedback, magnetic fields, and driven turbulence, to study the compression and expansion rates of the gas as functions of density. We show that,…
The settling behaviour of small inertial particles in turbulent convection is a fundamental problem across several disciplines, from geophysics to metallurgy. In a geophysical context, the settling of dense crystals controls the mode of…
Context: Sticking of colliding dust particles through van der Waals forces is the first stage in the grain growth process in protoplanetary disks, eventually leading to the formation of comets, asteroids and planets. A key aspect of the…
In active matter systems, self-propelled particles can self-organize to undergo collective motion, leading to persistent dynamical behavior out of equilibrium. In cells, cytoskeletal filaments and motor proteins self-organize into complex…
Dynamical heterogeneities in a colloidal fluid close to gelation are studied by means of computer simulations. A clear distinction between some fast particles and the rest, slow ones, is observed, yielding a picture of the gel composed by…
The path to understanding star formation processes begins with the study of the formation of molecular clouds. The outskirts of these clouds are characterized by low column densities that allow the penetration of ultraviolet radiation,…
In protoplanetary disks, the distribution and abundance of small (sub)micron grains are important for a range of physical and chemical processes. For example, they dominate the optical depth at short wavelengths and their surfaces are the…
Sticking properties rule the early phases of pebble growth in protoplanetary discs in which grains regularly travel from cold, water-rich regions to the warm inner part. This drift affects composition, grain size, morphology, and water…
We study fluidized granular gases in a stationary state determined by the balance between an external driving and the bulk dissipation. The two considered situations are inspired by recent experiments, where the gravity plays a major role…
Dust grains coagulate into larger aggregates in dense gas. This changes their size distribution and possibly affects the thermal evolution of star-forming clouds. We here investigate dust coagulation in collapsing pre-stellar cores with…
Dust grain dynamics in molecular clouds is regulated by its interplay with supersonic turbulent gas motions. The conditions under which dust grains decouple from the dynamics of gas remain poorly constrained. We first aim to investigate the…
We conducted micro-gravity experiments to study the outcome of collisions between sub-mm-sized dust agglomerates consisting of \mu m-sized SiO2 monomer grains at velocities of several cm/s. Prior to the experiments, we used X-ray computer…
We study the motions of small solids, ranging from micron-sized dust grains to 100-m objects, in the vicinity of a local density enhancement of an isothermal gaseous solar nebula. Being interested in possible application of the results to…
In a series of papers, we present a comprehensive analytic study of the global motion of growing dust grains in protoplanetary discs, addressing both the radial drift and the vertical settling of the particles. Here we study how the radial…
We performed micro-gravity collision experiments in our laboratory drop-tower using 5-cm-sized dust agglomerates with volume filling factors of 0.3 and 0.4, respectively. This work is an extension of our previous experiments reported in…
Previous work on protoplanetary dust growth shows halt at centimeter sizes owing to the occurrence of bouncing at velocities of $\geq$ 0.1 $ms^{-1}$ and fragmentation at velocities $\geq$ 1 $ms^{-1}$. To overcome these barriers, spatial…