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Register a new userPlanetesimal formation by the streaming instability in a photoevaporating disk
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Recent years have seen growing interest in the streaming instability as a candidate mechanism to produce planetesimals. However, these investigations have been limited to small-scale simulations. We now present the results of a global protoplanetary disk evolution model that incorporates planetesimal formation by the streaming instability, along with viscous accretion, photoevaporation by EUV, FUV, and X-ray photons, dust evolution, the water ice line, and stratified turbulence. Our simulations produce massive (60-130 $M_oplus$) planetesimal belts beyond 100 au and up to $sim 20 M_oplus$ of planetesimals in the middle regions (3-100 au). Our most comprehensive model forms 8 $M_oplus$ of planetesimals inside 3 au, where they can give rise to terrestrial planets. The planetesimal mass formed in the inner disk depends critically on the timing of the formation of an inner cavity in the disk by high-energy photons. Our results show that the combination of photoevaporation and the streaming instability are efficient at converting the solid component of protoplanetary disks into planetesimals. Our model, however, does not form enough early planetesimals in the inner and middle regions of the disk to give rise to giant planets and super-Earths with gaseous envelopes. Additional processes such as particle pileups and mass loss driven by MHD winds may be needed to drive the formation of early planetesimal generations in the planet forming regions of protoplanetary disks.
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A critical step toward the emergence of planets in a protoplanetary disk consists in accretion of planetesimals, bodies 1-1000 km in size, from smaller disk constituents. This process is poorly understood partly because we lack good observational constraints on the complex physical processes that contribute to planetesimal formation. In the outer solar system, the best place to look for clues is the Kuiper belt, where icy planetesimals survived to this day. Here we report evidence that Kuiper belt planetesimals formed by the streaming instability, a process in which aerodynamically concentrated clumps of pebbles gravitationally collapse into 100-km-class bodies. Gravitational collapse was previously suggested to explain the ubiquity of equal-size binaries in the Kuiper belt. We analyze new hydrodynamical simulations of the streaming instability to determine the model expectations for the spatial orientation of binary orbits. The predicted broad inclination distribution with 80% of prograde binary orbits matches the observations of trans-Neptunian binaries. The formation models which imply predominantly retrograde binary orbits can be ruled out. Given its applicability over a broad range of protoplanetary disk conditions, it is expected that the streaming instability seeded planetesimal formation also elsewhere in the solar system, and beyond.
The collapse of dust particle clouds directly to km-sized planetesimals is a promising way to explain the formation of planetesimals, asteroids and comets. In the past, this collapse has been studied in stratified shearing box simulations with super-solar dust-to-gas ratio epsilon, allowing for streaming instability (SI) and gravitational collapse. This paper studies the non-stratified SI under dust-to-gas ratios from epsilon=0.1 up to epsilon=1000 without self-gravity. The study covers domain sizes of L=0.1 H, 0.01 H and 0.001 H, in terms of gas disk scale height H, using the PencilCode. They are performed in radial-azimuthal (2-d) and radial-vertical (2.5-d) extent. The used particles of St=0.01 and 0.1 mark the upper end of the expected dust growth. SI-activity is found up to very high dust-to-gas ratios, providing fluctuations in the local dust-to-gas ratios and turbulent particle diffusion delta. We find an SI-like instability that operates in r-varphi even when vertical modes are suppressed. This new azimuthal streaming instability (aSI) shows similar properties and appearance as the SI. Both, SI and aSI, show diffusivity at epsilon=100 only to be two orders of magnitude lower than at epsilon=1, suggesting a delta ~ epsilon^{-1} relation that is shallow around epsilon = 1. The (a)SI ability to concentrate particles is found to be uncorrelated with its strength in particle turbulence. Finally, we performed a resolution study to test our findings of the aSI. This paper stresses out the importance of properly resolving the (a)SI at high dust-to-gas ratios and planetesimal collapse simulations, leading else wise to potentially incomplete results.
The streaming instability is often invoked as solution to the fragmentation and drift barriers in planetesimal formation, catalyzing the aggregation of dust on kyr timescales to grow km-sized cores. However there remains a lack of consensus on the physical mechanism(s) responsible for initiating it. One potential avenue is disc photoevaporation, wherein the preferential removal of relatively dust-free gas increases the disc metallicity. Late in the disc lifetime, photoevaporation dominates viscous accretion, creating a gradient in the depleted gas surface density near the location of the gap. This induces a local pressure maximum that collects drifting dust particles, which may then become susceptible to the streaming instability. Using a one-dimensional viscous evolution model of a disc subject to internal X-ray photoevaporation, we explore the efficacy of this process to build planetestimals. Over a range of parameters we find that the amount of dust mass converted into planetesimals is often < 1 M_Earth and at most a few M_Earth spread across tens of AU. We conclude that photoevaporation may at best be relevant for the formation of debris discs, rather than a common mechanism for the formation of planetary cores. Our results are in contrast to a recent, similar investigation that considered an FUV-driven photoevaporation model and reported the formation of tens of M_Earth at large (> 100 AU) disc radii. The discrepancies are primarily a consequence of the different photoevaporation profiles assumed. Until observations more tightly constrain photoevaporation models, the relevance of this process to the formation of planets remains uncertain.
We have studied formation of planetesimals at a radial pressure bump in a protoplanetary disk created by radially inhomogeneous magnetorotational instability (MRI), through three-dimensional resistive MHD simulations including dust particles. In our previous papers, we showed that the inhomogeneous MRI developing in non-uniform structure of magnetic field or magnetic resistivity can transform the local gas flow in the disk to a quasi-steady state with local rigid rotation that is no more unstable against the MRI. Since the outer part of the rigid rotation is super-Keplerian flow, a quasi-static pressure bump is created and dust concentration is expected there. In this paper, we perform simulations of the same systems, adding dust particles that suffer gas drag and modulate gas flow via the back-reaction of the gas drag (dust drag). We use O(10^7) super-particles, each of which represents many dust particles with sizes of centimeter to meter. We have found that the dust drag suppresses turbulent motion to decrease the velocity dispersion of the dust particles while it broadens the dust concentrated regions to limit peaky dust concentration, compared with the simulation without the dust drag. We found that reduction in the velocity dispersion) is dominated over the suppression in particle concentration. For meter-size particles with the friction time ~1/Omega, where Omega is Keplerian frequency, the gravitational instability of the dust particles that may lead to planetesimal formation is expected. For such a situation, we further introduced the self-gravity of dust particles to the simulation to demonstrate that several gravitationally bound clumps are actually formed. Through analytical arguments, we found that the planetesimal formation from meter-sized dust particles can be possible at ~5AU, if dust spatial density is a few times larger than that in the minimum mass solar nebula.
In protoplanetary discs, planetary cores must be at least 0.1 earth mass at 1 au for migration to be significant; this mass rises to 1 earth mass at 5 au. Planet formation models indicate that these cores form on million year timescales. We report here a study of the evolution of 0.1 earth mass and 1 earth mass cores, migrating from about 2 and 5 au respectively, in million year old photoevaporating discs. In such a disc, a gap opens up at around 2 au after a few million years. The inner region subsequently accrete onto the star on a smaller timescale. We find that, typically, the smallest cores form systems of non-resonant planets beyond 0.5 au with masses up to about 1.5 earth mass. In low mass discs, the same cores may evolve in situ. More massive cores form systems of a few earth masses planets. They migrate within the inner edge of the disc gap only in the most massive discs. Delivery of material to the inner parts of the disc ceases with opening of the gap. Interestingly, when the heavy cores do not migrate significantly, the type of systems that are produced resembles our solar system. This study suggests that low mm flux transition discs may not form systems of planets on short orbits but may instead harbour earth mass planets in the habitable zone.
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