Related papers: Flux-Limited Diffusion Approximation Models of Gia…
Using a local model Gammie (2001) has shown that accretion discs with cooling times t_cool <= 3/Omega fragment into gravitationally bound objects, while those with cooling times t_cool > 3/Omega evolve into a quasi-steady state. We use…
Many protoplanetary discs are self-gravitating early in their lives. If they fragment under their own gravity, they form bound gaseous clumps which may evolve to become giant planets. Today, the fraction of discs that undergo fragmentation,…
Transitional disks, protoplanetary disks with deep and wide central gaps, may be the result of planetary sculpting. By comparing numerical planet-opening-gap models with observed gaps, we find systems of 3-6 giant planets are needed in…
We explore the initial conditions for fragments in the extended regions ($r\gtrsim 50$ AU) of gravitationally unstable disks. We combine analytic estimates for the fragmentation of spiral arms with 3D SPH simulations to show that initial…
Context: We studied numerically the formation of giant planet (GP) and brown dwarf (BD) embryos in gravitationally unstable protostellar disks and compared our findings with directly-imaged, wide-orbit (>= 50 AU) companions known to-date.…
We investigate the conditions required for planet formation via gravitational instability (GI) and protoplanetary disk (PPD) fragmentation around M-dwarfs. Using a suite of 64 SPH simulations with $10^6$ particles, the parameter space of…
Circumplanetary disks (CPDs) may be essential to the formation of planets, regulating their spin and accretion evolution. We perform a series of 3D hydrodynamics simulations in both the isothermal and adiabatic limits to systematically…
Thanks to ``dust-to-planet'' simulations (DTPSs), which treat the collisional evolution directly from dust to giant-planet cores in a protoplanetary disk, we showed that giant-planet cores are formed in $\lesssim 10\,$au in several $10^5$…
Direct imaging observations of planets revealed that wide-orbit ($>10$ au) giant planets exist even around subsolar-metallicity host stars and do not require metal-rich environments for their formation. A possible formation mechanism of…
We present a new instability driven by a combination of coagulation and radial drift of dust particles. We refer to this instability as ``coagulation instability" and regard it as a promising mechanism to concentrate dust particles and…
Protoplanetary gas disks are likely to experience gravitational instabilites (GI's) during some phase of their evolution. Density perturbations in an unstable disk grow on a dynamic time scale into spiral arms that produce efficient outward…
In the nucleated instability picture of gas giant formation, the final stage is the rapid accretion of a massive gas envelope by a solid core, bringing about a tenfold or more increase in mass. This tends to trigger the scattering of any…
Over 50 circumbinary exoplanets have been discovered in recent years, with several of them being gas giants on wide orbits ($>10$AU). The aim of this work is to investigate whether these planets can form through circumbinary disc…
It is often argued that gravitational instability of realistic protoplanetary discs is only possible at distances larger than $\sim 50$ au from the central star, requiring high disc masses and accretion rates, and that therefore disc…
The observation of massive exoplanets at large separation from their host star, like in the HR 8799 system, challenges theories of planet formation. A possible formation mechanism involves the fragmentation of massive self-gravitating discs…
Context: The global size and spatial distribution of dust is an important ingredient in the structure and evolution of protoplanetary disks and in the formation of larger bodies, such as planetesimals. Aims: We aim to derive simple…
Observations of high redshift galaxies have revealed a multitude of large clumpy rapidly star-forming galaxies. Their formation scenario and their link to present day spirals is still unknown. In this Letter we perform adaptive mesh…
Molecular gas disks are generally Toomre stable ($Q_T>$1) and yet clearly gravitationally unstable to structure formation as evidenced by the existence of molecular clouds and ongoing star formation. This paper adopts a 3D perspective to…
We use resistive magnetohydrodynamical simulations with the nested grid technique to study the formation of protoplanetary disks around protostars from molecular cloud cores that provide the realistic environments for planet formation. We…
The amount of dust present in circumstellar disks is expected to steadily decrease with age due to the growth from micron-sized particles to planetesimals and planets. Mature circumstellar disks, however, can be observed to contain…