Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userOn the coexistence of the streaming instability and the vertical shear instability in protoplanetary disks
156
0
0.0
(
0
)
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
The streaming instability is a leading candidate mechanism to explain the formation of planetesimals. Yet, the role of this instability in the driving of turbulence in protoplanetary disks, given its fundamental nature as a linear hydrodynamical instability, has so far not been investigated in detail. We study the turbulence that is induced by the streaming instability as well as its interaction with the vertical shear instability. For this purpose, we employ the FLASH Code to conduct two-dimensional axisymmetric global disk simulations spanning radii from $1$ au to $100$ au, including the mutual drag between gas and dust as well as the radial and vertical stellar gravity. If the streaming instability and the vertical shear instability start their growth at the same time, we find the turbulence in the dust mid-plane layer to be primarily driven by the streaming instability. It gives rise to vertical gas motions with a Mach number of up to ${sim}10^{-2}$. The dust scale height is set in a self-regulatory manner to about $1%$ of the gas scale height. In contrast, if the vertical shear instability is allowed to saturate before the dust is introduced into our simulations, then it continues to be the main source of the turbulence in the dust layer. The vertical shear instability induces turbulence with a Mach number of ${sim}10^{-1}$ and thus impedes dust sedimentation. Nonetheless, we find the vertical shear instability and the streaming instability in combination to lead to radial dust concentration in long-lived accumulations which are significantly denser than those formed by the streaming instability alone. Thus, the vertical shear instability may promote planetesimal formation by creating weak overdensities that act as seeds for the streaming instability.
rate research
Read More
The vertical shear instability (VSI) is a robust phenomenon in irradiated protoplanetary disks (PPDs). While there is extensive literature on the VSI in the hydrodynamic limit, PPDs are expected to be magnetized and their extremely low ionization fractions imply that non-ideal magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) effects should be properly considered. To this end, we present linear analyses of the VSI in magnetized disks with Ohmic resistivity. We primarily consider toroidal magnetic fields, which are likely to dominate the field geometry in PPDs. We perform vertically global and radially local analyses to capture characteristic VSI modes with extended vertical structures. To focus on the effect of magnetism, we use a locally isothermal equation of state. We find that magnetism provides a stabilizing effect to dampen the VSI, with surface modes, rather than body modes, being the first to vanish with increasing magnetization. Subdued VSI modes can be revived by Ohmic resistivity, where sufficient magnetic diffusion overcome magnetic stabilization, and hydrodynamic results are recovered. We also briefly consider poloidal fields to account for the magnetorotational instability (MRI), which may develop towards surface layers in the outer parts of PPDs. The MRI grows efficiently at small radial wavenumbers, in contrast to the VSI. When resistivity is considered, we find the VSI dominates over the MRI for Ohmic Els{a}sser numbers $lesssim 0.09$ at plasma beta parameter $beta_Z sim 10^4$.
The vertical shear instability (VSI) offers a potential hydrodynamic mechanism for angular momentum transport in protoplanetary disks (PPDs). The VSI is driven by a weak vertical gradient in the disks orbital motion, but must overcome vertical buoyancy, a strongly stabilizing influence in cold disks, where heating is dominated by external irradiation. Rapid radiative cooling reduces the effective buoyancy and allows the VSI to operate. We quantify the cooling timescale $t_c$ needed for efficient VSI growth, through a linear analysis of the VSI with cooling in vertically global, radially local disk models. We find the VSI is most vigorous for rapid cooling with $t_c<Omega_mathrm{K}^{-1}h|q|/(gamma -1)$ in terms of the Keplerian orbital frequency, $Omega_mathrm{K}$; the disks aspect-ratio, $hll1$; the radial power-law temperature gradient, $q$; and the adiabatic index, $gamma$. For longer $t_c$, the VSI is much less effective because growth slows and shifts to smaller length scales, which are more prone to viscous or turbulent decay. We apply our results to PPD models where $t_c$ is determined by the opacity of dust grains. We find that the VSI is most effective at intermediate radii, from $sim5$AU to $sim50$AU with a characteristic growth time of $sim30$ local orbital periods. Growth is suppressed by long cooling times both in the opaque inner disk and the optically thin outer disk. Reducing the dust opacity by a factor of 10 increases cooling times enough to quench the VSI at all disk radii. Thus the formation of solid protoplanets, a sink for dust grains, can impede the VSI.
Context. Dynamical and turbulent motions of gas in a protoplanetary disk are crucial for their evolution and affect planet formation. Recent observations suggest weak turbulence in the disks outer regions. However, the physical mechanism of turbulence in these outer regions remains uncertain. The vertical shear instability (VSI) is a promising mechanism to produce turbulence in disks. Aims. Our aim is to study the observability of the gas velocity structure produced by the VSI via CO kinematics with ALMA. Methods. We perform global 3D hydrodynamical simulations of a VSI-unstable disk. We post-process the simulation results with radiative transfer calculations, and produce synthetic predictions of CO rotational emission lines. Following, we compute the line of sight velocity map, and its deviations from a sub-Keplerian equilibrium solution. We explore the detectability of the VSI by identifying kinematic signatures using realistic simulated observations. Results. Our 3D simulations of the VSI show the steady state dynamics of the gas in great detail. From the velocity structure we infer a turbulent stress value of $alpha_{rphi}=1.4 times 10^{-4}$. On large scales, we observe velocity deviations of 50 m s$^{-1}$ as axisymmetric rings. We find optimal conditions at $i lesssim 20^{circ}$ to trace for the kinematic structures of the VSI. We found that current diagnostics to constrain gas turbulence from non-thermal broadening of the line emission are not applicable to anisotropic VSI turbulence. Conclusions. The detection of kinematic signatures produced by the VSI is possible with ALMA. Observations including an extended antenna configuration combined with the highest spectral resolution available are needed for robust detection. The characterization of the large-scale velocity perturbations is required to constrain the turbulence level produced by the VSI from gas observations.
The streaming instability is a popular candidate for planetesimal formation by concentrating dust particles to trigger gravitational collapse. However, its robustness against physical conditions expected in protoplanetary disks is unclear. In particular, particle stirring by turbulence may impede the instability. To quantify this effect, we develop the linear theory of the streaming instability with external turbulence modelled by gas viscosity and particle diffusion. We find the streaming instability is sensitive to turbulence, with growth rates becoming negligible for alpha-viscosity parameters $alpha gtrsim mathrm{St} ^{1.5}$, where $mathrm{St}$ is the particle Stokes number. We explore the effect of non-linear drag laws, which may be applicable to porous dust particles, and find growth rates are modestly reduced. We also find that gas compressibility increase growth rates by reducing the effect of diffusion. We then apply linear theory to global models of viscous protoplanetary disks. For minimum-mass Solar nebula disk models, we find the streaming instability only grows within disk lifetimes beyond $sim 10$s of AU, even for cm-sized particles and weak turbulence ($alphasim 10^{-4}$). Our results suggest it is rather difficult to trigger the streaming instability in non-laminar protoplanetary disks, especially for small particles.
The Streaming Instability (SI) is a mechanism to concentrate solids in protoplanetary disks. Nonlinear particle clumping from the SI can trigger gravitational collapse into planetesimals. To better understand the numerical robustness of the SI, we perform a suite of vertically-stratified 3D simulations with fixed physical parameters known to produce strong clumping. We vary the numerical implementation, namely the computational domain size and the vertical boundary conditions (vBCs), comparing newly-implemented outflow vBCs to the previously-used periodic and reflecting vBCs. We find strong particle clumping by the SI is mostly independent of the vBCs. However, peak particle densities are higher in larger simulation domains due to a larger particle mass reservoir. We report SI-triggered zonal flows, i.e., azimuthally-banded radial variations of gas pressure. These structures have low amplitudes, insufficient to halt particle radial drift, confirming that particle trapping in gas pressure maxima is not the mechanism of the SI. We find that outflow vBCs produce artificially large gas outflow rates at vertical boundaries. However, the outflow vBCs reduce artificial reflections at vertical boundaries, allowing more particle sedimentation, and showing less temporal variation and better convergence with box size. The radial spacing of dense particle filaments is $sim0.15$ gas scale heights ($H$) for all vBCs, which sets the feeding zone for planetesimal growth in self-gravitating simulations. Our results validate the use of the outflow vBCs in SI simulations, even with vertical boundaries close ($leq 0.4H$) to the disk midplane. Overall, our study demonstrates the numerical robustness of nonlinear particle clumping by the SI.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
