Related papers: Irradiated Disks May Settle into Staircases
Theoretical models predict that the obscuration of stellar radiation by irregularities on the surface of a protoplanetary disk can cause self-generating waves traveling towards the star. However, this process is traditionally simulated…
While planets in the solar system only have a low inclination with respect to the ecliptic there is mounting evidence that in extrasolar systems the inclination can be very high, at least for close-in planets. One process to alter the…
We use high resolution numerical simulations to study whether gravitational instabilities within circumstellar discs can produce astrometrically detectable motion of the central star. For discs with masses of M_disc = 0.1 M_star, which are…
We explore the linear stability of astrophysical discs exhibiting vertical shear, which arises when there is a radial variation in the temperature or entropy. Such discs are subject to a "vertical-shear instability", which recent nonlinear…
Planets form in young circumstellar disks called protoplanetary disks. However, it is still difficult to catch planet formation in-situ. Nevertheless, from recent ALMA/SPHERE data, encouraging evidence of the direct and indirect presence of…
In this review, I discuss just three aspects of the stability and evolution of galactic discs. (1) I first review our understanding of the bar instability and how it can be controlled. Disc galaxies in which the orbital speed does not…
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…
We conduct three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations to investigate the nonlinear outcomes and observability of vertical shear instability (VSI) in protoplanetary disks. Our models include both vertically isothermal and thermally…
The standard thin accretion disk model has been successfully used to explain the soft X-ray spectra of Galactic black hole systems and perhaps the UV emission of Active Galactic Nuclei. However, radiation pressure dominated disks are known…
The standard accretion discs are known to be thermally and viscously unstable over a certain range of temperatures. In the inner disc regions there may develop radiation pressure driven instability, which is possibly related to the rapid…
In the disk-mediated accretion scenario for the formation of the most massive stars, gravitational instabilities in the disk can force it to fragment. We investigate the effects of inclination and spatial resolution on observable kinematics…
We derive the evolution equations describing a thin axisymmetric disk of gas and stars with an arbitrary rotation curve that is kept in a state of marginal gravitational instability and energy equilibrium due to the balance between energy…
We carry out three dimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations to study the impact of planet-disc interactions on a gravitationally unstable protoplanetary disc. We find that the impact of a planet on the disc's evolution can be…
Disk instability is an attractive yet controversial means for the rapid formation of giant planets in our solar system and elsewhere. Recent concerns regarding the first adiabatic exponent of molecular hydrogen gas are addressed and shown…
We find that, under certain conditions, protoplanetary disks may spontaneously generate multiple, concentric gas rings without an embedded planet through an eccentric cooling instability. Using both linear theory and non-linear…
It is known that the external irradiation of protoplanetary disks by nearby massive stars can result in mass loss that impacts the disk evolution, however the dynamical impact of external irradiation upon the disk itself has not been…
We have employed a 3-d energy-conserving radiation MHD code to simulate the vertical structure and thermodynamics of a shearing box whose parameters were chosen so that the radiation and gas pressures would be comparable. The upper layers…
A photoionized gas in thermal equilibrium can display a thermal instability, with 3 or more solutions in the multi-branch region of the S-shape curve giving the temperature versus the radiation-to-gas-pressure ratio. Many studies have been…
Planets embedded in optically thick passive accretion disks are expected to produce perturbations in the density and temperature structure of the disk. We calculate the magnitudes of these perturbations for a range of planet masses and…
The vertical shear instability (VSI) is a robust phenomenon in irradiated protoplanetary disks (PPDs). The majority of previous numerical simulations have focused on the turbulent properties of its saturated state. However, the saturation…