Three-dimensional simulations of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the dusty midplane of a protoplanetary disk

Details Three-dimensional simulations of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the dusty midplane of a protoplanetary disk Three-dimensional simulations of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the dusty midplane of a protoplanetary disk

Dec 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005aas...20719602b&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society Meeting 207, #196.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 37, p.1494

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Scientific paper

One of the least understood stages of planet formation is how millimeter-sized dust grains coalesce into kilometer-sized planetesimals. Goldreich & Ward (1973) and Safranov (1960) proposed that dust grains would settle into a thin sub-layer in the midplane of a protoplanetary disk; and that such a layer would be gravitationally unstable and clump up directly into planetesimals. Weidenschilling & Cuzzi (1993) argued that a dust sub-layer would set up a vertical shear profile that would be unstable to Kelvin-Helmholtz-like instabilities. Pure gas orbits the protostar at a rate slightly slower than the true Keplerian rate because the weak outward radial pressure gradient partially cancels the radial component of gravity. A layer of particles, on the other hand, orbits exactly at the Keplerian rate. In the case of a dusty midplane, the dust particles would drag the gas forward so that the midplane would rotate faster than the dust-depleted regions above and below the midplane. We have computed fully three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of this shear instability, and its nonlinear evolution into turbulence and the re-mixing of the dust layer. We discuss the impact of this instability on the gravitational instability scenario of planetesimal formation. J.A.B. is supported via a NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship.

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