Heating and Cooling Protoplanetary Disks

Details Heating and Cooling Protoplanetary Disks Heating and Cooling Protoplanetary Disks

Sep 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011ess.....2.3605t&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, ESS meeting #2, #36.05

Computer Science

Sound

Scientific paper

Planets form in the disks of gas and dust orbiting young stars. Much of the material spirals inward, and is observed in many cases falling onto the growing star. The gravitational energy released during the inspiral powers the turbulent stirring and heating of the planet-forming flow, governing temperatures, densities and velocity fields. The nature of the energy release process has been a mystery, and thus a major uncertainty in planet formation models for decades. I will discuss the possibility that magnetic activity is the driver.
Any picture of the energy release must account for these issues:
(1) The near-infrared emission from carbon monoxide molecules in the atmospheres of some disks shows transonic velocities.
(2) Thermal-chemical modeling indicates the emission cannot be powered by the starlight or stellar X-rays, but can be powered by the inflow if the atmospheric turbulence reaches the sound speed.
(3) Mid-infrared emission lines of water and several carbon-bearing molecules are widespread among young solar-mass stars with disks, as found recently with the Spitzer Space Telescope. The lines probe conditions in the disk atmospheres. The water lines originate in gas about 1 AU from the star, with temperatures around 600 K, substantially hotter than the disk photosphere.
I will outline how magnetic activity can lead to each of these properties, using results from the first 3-D numerical radiation-MHD calculations of the energy release to treat the stellar X-ray ionization coupling the gas to the magnetic fields. Matching such models against the molecular spectra will enable us to infer the conditions in the disk interior where the planets form.

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