Related papers: Irradiated Disks May Settle into Staircases
We address the cosmological evolution of violent gravitational instability in high-redshift, massive, star-forming galactic discs. To this aim, we integrate in time the equations of mass and energy conservation under self-regulated…
Vertical shear instability (VSI), driven by a vertical gradient of rotational angular velocity, is a promising source of turbulence in protoplanetary disks. We examine the semi-global stability of thermally stratified disks and find that…
Spiral arms have been observed in nearly a dozen protoplanetary discs in near-infrared scattered light and recently also in the sub-millimetre continuum. While one of the most compelling explanations is that they are driven by planetary or…
In this work, we present a linear stability analysis of fully-ionized rotating plasma disks with a temperature gradient and a sub-thermal background magnetic field (oriented towards the axial direction). We describe how the plasma reacts…
Our understanding of the dynamical processes which control the structure and evolution of the interaction region between an accretion disk and the central star is reviewed. If the central star is unmagnetized, this interaction is in the…
Volatile species in protoplanetary discs can undergo a phase change from vapour to solid. These "snow-lines" can play vital roles in planet formation at all scales, from dust coagulation to planetary migration. In the outer regions of…
Astrophysical disks that are sufficiently cold and dense are linearly unstable to the formation of axisymmetric rings as a result of the disk's gravity. In practice, spiral structures are formed, which may in turn produce bound fragments.…
It is speculated that the accretion of material onto young protostars is episodic. We present a computational method to include the effects of episodic accretion in radiation hydrodynamic simulations of star formation. We find that during…
Both core accretion and disk instability appear to be required as formation mechanisms in order to explain the entire range of giant planets found in extrasolar planetary systems. Disk instability is based on the formation of clumps in a…
It is likely that young protostellar disks undergo a self-gravitating phase. Such systems are characterized by the presence of a spiral pattern that can be either in a quasi-steady state or in a nonlinear unstable condition. This spiral…
Protoplanetary disks often appear as multiple concentric rings in dust continuum emission maps and scattered light images. These features are often associated with possible young planets in these disks. Many non-planetary explanations have…
Under the right conditions, the streaming instability between imperfectly coupled dust and gas is a powerful mechanism for planetesimal formation as it can concentrate dust grains to the point of gravitational collapse. In its simplest…
We test the effect of assumptions about stellar motion on the behavior of gravitational instabilities in protoplanetary disks around solar-type stars by performing two simulations that are identical in all respects except the treatment of…
We propose that turbulent heating, wave pressure and gas exchanges between different regions of disks play a dominant role in determining the preferred, quasi-equilibrium, self-similar states of gas disks on large-scales. We present simple…
Enhancing the local dust-to-gas ratio in protoplanetary discs is a necessary first step to planetesimal formation. In laminar discs, dust settling is an efficient mechanism to raise the dust-to-gas ratio at the disc midplane. However,…
Using numerical MHD simulations, we have studied the evolution of the magnetorotational instability in stratified accretion disks in which the ionization fraction (and therefore resistivity) varies substantially with height. This model is…
The thermal instability of accretion disks is widely used to explain the activity of cataclysmic variables, but its development in protoplanetary disks has been studied in less detail. We present a semi-analytical stationary model for…
In the context of planet formation, anticyclonic vortices have recently received lots of attention for the role they can play in planetesimals formation. Radial migration of intermediate size solids toward the central star may prevent their…
We show that thin accretion disks made of Carbon or Oxygen are subject to the same thermal ionization instability as Hydrogen and Helium disks. We argue that the instability applies to disks of any metal content. The relevance of the…
We present local simulations that verify the linear streaming instability that arises from aerodynamic coupling between solids and gas in protoplanetary disks. This robust instability creates enhancements in the particle density in order to…