The Magneto-Rotational Instability in Protoplanetary Disks

Details The Magneto-Rotational Instability in Protoplanetary Disks The Magneto-Rotational Instability in Protoplanetary Disks

Sep 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003rmxac..18...92r&link_type=abstract

The Eight Texas-Mexico Conference on Astrophysics (Eds. M. Reyes-Ruiz & E. Vázquez-Semadeni) Revista Mexicana de Astronomía y As

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

5

Hydrodynamics, Unstabilities, Planetary Systems : Formation, Accretion : Accretion Disks

Scientific paper

We review the current understanding of how mass accretion takes place in protoplanetary disks. Particular emphasis is placed on the role played by the magneto-rotational instability (MRI) in the transport of angular momentum across the disk. We discuss the conditions for the development of the MRI in the poorly ionized regions of protoplanetary disks. We find that the vertical stratification of the ionization degree, resulting from the incidence of extraneous energetic particles or photons, hinders the development of the MRI to a greater degree than that resulting in uniform ionization models. We also discuss the anomalous viscosity induced in the so-called dead zone by the velocity fluctuations of gas in the neighboring active layers in layered accretion models for protoplanetary disks. We conclude that angular momentum transport through the dead zone occurs at a comparable efficiency to surrounding active layers. This implies that current protoplanetary disk models based on the idea of layered accretion, must be revised in favor of 1-D models with a radially varying viscosity coefficient.

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