Related papers: Steeper Scattered Disks Buckle Faster
We study the conditions for collisions between planetesimals to be accretional or disruptive in turbulent disks, through analytical arguments based on fluid dynamical simulations and orbital integrations. In turbulent disks, the velocity…
A model of a galactic disk is presented which extends the homogeneous one zone models by incorporating propagation of material and energy in the disk. For reasonable values of the parameters the homogeneous steady state is unstable to the…
We study an accretion disk in which three different regions may coexist: MHD turbulent regions, dead zones and gravitationally unstable regions. Although the dead zones are stable, there is some transport due to the Reynolds stress…
We study the orbital evolution of the 4 giant planets of our solar system in a gas disk. Our investigation extends the previous works by Masset and Snellgrove (2001) and Morbidelli and Crida (2007, MC07), which focussed on the dynamics of…
The presence of a giant planet in a low-viscosity disc can create a gap edge in the disc's radial density profile sharp enough to excite the Rossby Wave Instability. This instability may evolve into dust-trapping vortices that might explain…
We study the stability of proto-planetary disks with vertical velocity gradients in their equilibrium rotation rates; such gradients are expected to develop when dust settles into the midplane. Using a linear stability analysis of a simple…
In this paper we consider the evolution of small planetesimals in marginally stable, self-gravitating protoplanetary discs. The drag force between the disc gas and the embedded planetesimals generally causes the planetesimals to drift…
We describe a model for the long term evolution of a circumplanetary disk that is fed mass from a circumstellar disk and contains regions of low turbulence (dead zones). We show that such disks can be subject to accretion driven outbursts,…
Recent imaging of protoplanetary disks with high resolution and contrast have revealed a striking variety of substructure. Of particular interest are cases where near-infrared scattered light images show evidence for low-intensity annular…
The problem of disk accretion onto the surface of a neutron star with a weak magnetic field at a luminosity exceeding several percent of Eddington is reduced to the problem of the braking of a hypersonic flow with a velocity that is 0.4-0.5…
We report on the detection of four rotating massive disks in two regions of high-mass star formation. The disks are perpendicular to known bipolar outflows and turn out to be unstable but long lived. We infer that accretion onto the…
Stellar multiple systems play a pivotal role in cluster dynamics and stellar evolution, leading to intense astronomical phenomena like X-ray binaries, gamma-ray bursts, Type Ia supernova, and stellar mergers, which are prime sources of…
Debris rings of dust are found around young luminous stars such as HR4796A and HD141569. Some of these entities have sharp edges and gaps which have been interpreted as evidence for the presence of shepherding and embedded planets. Here we…
Incremental particle growth in turbulent protoplanetary nebulae is limited by a combination of barriers that can slow or stall growth. Moreover, particles that grow massive enough to decouple from the gas are subject to inward radial drift…
The saturation conditions for bending modes in inhomogeneous thin stellar disks that follow from an analysis of the dispersion relation are compared with those derived from $N$-body simulations. In the central regions of inhomogeneous…
Due to the gas rich environments of early circumstellar disks, the gravitational collapse of cool, dense regions of the disk form fragments largely composed of gas. During formation, disk fragments may attain increased metallicities as they…
We study bisymmetric modes of angular wavenumber 2 for flat stellar disks in potentials with smooth cores. Stars either all circulate in the same direction or a small fraction may counter-rotate. The bisymmetric modes are unstable unless…
A fundamental assumption in our understanding of disks is that when the Toomre Q>>1, the disk is stable against fragmentation into self-gravitating objects (and so cannot form planets via direct collapse). But if disks are turbulent, this…
We demonstrate that generically an accretion disk around a compact object could have a new type of instability in that the accretion flow need not be symmetric with respect to the equatorial plane even when matter is supplied symmetrically…
Massive black holes have been discovered in all closely examined galaxies with high velocity dispersion. The case is not as clear for lower-dispersion systems such as low-mass galaxies and globular clusters. Here we suggest that above a…