No Arabic abstract
Hydrodynamical simulations show that a pair of spiral arms can form in the disk around a rapidly-growing young star and that the arms are crucial in transporting angular momentum as the disk accretes material from the surrounding envelope. Here we report the detection of a pair of symmetric spiral structures in a protostellar disk, supporting the formation of spiral arms in the disk around a forming star. The HH 111 VLA 1 source is a young Class I source embedded in a massive infalling protostellar envelope and is actively accreting, driving the prominent HH 111 jet. Previous observations showed a ring of shock emission around the disks outer edge, indicating accretion of the envelope material onto the disk at a high rate. Now with ALMA observations of thermal emission from dust particles, we detect a pair of spiral arms extending from the inner region to the disks outer edge, similar to that seen in many simulations. Additionally, the disk is massive, with Toomres Q parameter near unity in the outer parts where the spiral structures are detected, supporting the notion that envelope accretion is driving the outer disk gravitationally unstable. In our observations, another source, HH 111 VLA 2, is spatially resolved for the first time, showing a disk-like structure with a diameter of ~ 26 au and an orientation nearly orthogonal to that of the HH 111 VLA 1 disk.
Spiral density waves are known to exist in many astrophysical disks, potentially affecting disk structure and evolution. We conduct a numerical study of the effects produced by a density wave, evolving into a shock, on the characteristics of the underlying disk. We measure the deposition of angular momentum in the disk by spiral shocks of different strength and verify the analytical prediction of Rafikov (2016) for the behavior of this quantity, using shock amplitude (which is potentially observable) as the input variable. Good agreement between the theory and numerics is found as we vary shock amplitude (including highly nonlinear shocks), disk aspect ratio, equation of state, radial profiles of the background density and temperature, and pattern speed of the wave. We show that high numerical resolution is required to properly capture shock-driven transport, especially at low wave amplitudes. We also demonstrate that relating local mass accretion rate to shock dissipation in rapidly evolving disks requires accounting for the time-dependent contribution to the angular momentum budget, caused by the time dependence of the radial pressure support. We provide a simple analytical prescription for the behavior of this contribution and demonstrate its excellent agreement with the simulation results. Using these findings we formulate a theoretical framework for studying one-dimensional (in radius) evolution of the shock-mediated accretion disks, which can be applied to a variety of astrophysical systems.
We perform collisionless N-body simulations to investigate the evolution of the structural and kinematical properties of simulated thick disks induced by the growth of an embedded thin disk. The thick disks used in the present study originate from cosmologically-common 5:1 encounters between initially-thin primary disk galaxies and infalling satellites. The growing thin disks are modeled as static gravitational potentials and we explore a variety of growing-disk parameters that are likely to influence the response of thick disks. We find that the final thick-disk properties depend strongly on the total mass and radial scale-length of the growing thin disk, and much less sensitively on its growth timescale and vertical scale-height as well as the initial sense of thick-disk rotation. Overall, the growth of an embedded thin disk can cause a substantial contraction in both the radial and vertical direction, resulting in a significant decrease in the scale-lengths and scale-heights of thick disks. Kinematically, a growing thin disk can induce a notable increase in the mean rotation and velocity dispersions of thick-disk stars. We conclude that the reformation of a thin disk via gas accretion may play a significant role in setting the structure and kinematics of thick disks, and thus it is an important ingredient in models of thick-disk formation.
Accretion discs are ubiquitous in the universe and it is a crucial issue to understand how angular momentum and mass are being radially transported in these objects. Here, we study the role played by non-linear spiral patterns within hydrodynamical and non self-gravitating accretion disc assuming that external disturbances such as infall onto the disc may trigger them. To do so, we computed self-similar solutions that describe discs in which a spiral wave propagates. Such solutions present both shocks and critical sonic points that we carefully analyze. For all allowed temperatures and for several spiral shocks, we calculated the wave structure. In particular we inferred the angle of the spiral patern, the stress it exerts on the disc as well as the associated flux of mass and angular momentum as a function of temperature. We quantified the rate of angular momentum transport by means of the dimensionless $alpha$ parameter. For the thickest disc we considered (corresponding to $h/r$ values of about 1/3), we found values of $alpha$ as high as $0.1$, and scaling with the temperature $T$ such that $alpha propto T^{3/2} propto (h/r)^3$. The spiral angle scales with the temperature as $arctan(r/h)$. The existence of these solutions suggests that perturbations occurring at disc outer boundaries, such as for example perturbations due to infall motions, can propagate deep inside the disc and therefore should not be ignored, even when considering small radii.
Understanding how accretion proceeds in proto-planetary discs and more generally their dynamics is a crucial issue for explaining the conditions in which planets form. The role that accretion of gas from the surrounding molecular cloud onto the disc may have on its structure needs to be quantified. We perform tri-dimensional simulations using the Cartesian AMR code RAMSES of an accretion disc subject to infalling material. For the aspect ratio of $H/R simeq 0.15$ and disk mass $M_d simeq 10^{-2}$ M$_odot$ used in our study, we find that for typical accretion rates on the order of a few 10$^{-7}$ M$_odot$ yr$^{-1}$, values of the $alpha$ parameter as high as a few 10$^{-3}$ are inferred. The mass that is accreted in the inner part of the disc is typically at least $50%$ of the total mass that has been accreted onto the disc. Our results suggest that external accretion of gas at moderate values, onto circumstellar discs may trigger prominent spiral arms, reminiscent of recent observations made with various instruments, and lead to significant transport through the disc. If confirmed from observational studies, such accretion may therefore influence disc evolution.
In this note we discuss the main results of a study of a massive binary with unequal mass ratio, q, embedded in an accretion disk, with its orbital rotation being opposed to that of the disk. When the mass ratio is sufficiently large, a gap opens in the disk, but the mechanism of gap formation is very different from the prograde case. Inward migration occurs on a timescale of t_ev ~ M_p/(dot M), where M_p is the mass of the less massive component (the perturber), and dot M is the accretion rate. When q<< 1, the accretion takes place mostly onto the more massive component, with the accretion rate onto the perturber being smaller than, or of order of, q^(1/3)M. However, this rate increases when supermassive binary black holes are considered and gravitational wave emission is important. We estimate a typical duration of time for which the accretion onto the perturber and gravitational waves could be detected.