Circumplanetary Disk Formation

Details Circumplanetary Disk Formation Circumplanetary Disk Formation

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.5206w&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #52.06

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The development and evolution of a circumplanetary disk during the accretion of a giant planet is examined. The planet gains mass and angular momentum from in-falling solar nebula material while simultaneously contracting due to luminosity losses. Eventually the planet becomes rotationally unstable and begins to shed material into a circumplanetary disk. Viscosity causes the disk to spread to a good fraction of the Hill radius where material is assumed to escape back into heliocentric orbit. The large disk radius allows it to efficiently remove angular momentum so that only a modest mass loss is required to maintain the planet at the rotational stability threshold. As contraction continues, the radius of the planet may become smaller than the range of the inflow pattern and material begins to fall directly onto the disk, which switches from a spin-out disk to an accretion disk. In this situation, most of the circumplanetary disk in-plane flux is toward the planet, although there is a stagnation point where the flux changes sign, with a small fraction still continuing to carry angular momentum outward. This configuration persists as the inflow wanes. As the surface density and temperature drop with the inflow rate, the environment becomes conducive to ice-rock satellite formation. Some satellites may form only to be lost via disk tidal torques. The current satellite systems of the gas giants may be the last surviving members of this process.
This research was supported by grants from NSF and from NASA's OPR and Origins programs.

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