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We present a global MHD simulation of a turbulent accretion disc interacting with a protoplanet of 5 Jupiter masses. The disc model had H/r=0.1,and a value of the Shakura & Sunyaev alpha ~ 0.005. The protoplanet opened a gap in the disc, with the interaction leading to inward migration on the expected time scale. Spiral waves were launched by the protoplanet and although they were diffused and dissipated through interaction with the turbulence, they produced an outward angular momentum flow which compensated for a reduced flux associated with the turbulence, so maintaining the gap. When compared with laminar disc models with the same estimated alpha, the gap was found to be deeper and wider indicating that the turbulent disc behaved as if it possessed a smaller alpha. This may arise for two reasons. First, the turbulence does not provide a source of constantly acting friction in the near vicinity of the planet that leads to steady mass flow into the gap region. Instead the turbulence is characterised by large fluctuations in the radial velocity, and time averaging over significant time scales is required to recover the underlying mass flow through the disc. Near the planet the disc material experiences high amplitude perturbations on time scales that are short relative to the time scale required for averaging. The disc response is thus likely to be altered relative to a Navier--Stokes model. Second, the simulation indicates that an ordered magnetic connection between the inner and outer disc can occur enabling angular momentum to flow out across the gap, helping to maintain it independently of the protoplanets tide. This type of effect may assist gap formation for smaller mass protoplanets which otherwise would not be able to maintain them.
(Abridged) We present global disc and local shearing box simulations of planets interacting with a MHD turbulent disc. We examine the torque exerted by the disc on the embedded planets as a function of planet mass, and thus make a first study of orbital migration of planets due to interaction with turbulent discs. Global simulations were performed for a disc with H/R=0.07 and planet masses M_p=3,10,30 Earth masses, and 3 Jupiter masses. Shearing box runs were performed for values of (M_p/M_*)/(H/R)^3=0.1,0.3,1.0 and 2.0, M_* being the central mass. These allow embedded and gap forming planets to be examined. In all cases the instantaneous torque exerted on a planet showed strong fluctuations. In the embedded cases it oscillated between negative and positive values, and migration occurs as a random walk, unlike the usual type I migration. Running time averages for embedded planets over 20-25 orbital periods show that large fluctuations occur on longer time scales, preventing convergence of the average torque to well defined values, or even to a well defined sign. Fluctuations become relatively smaller for larger masses, giving better convergence, due to the planets perturbation of the disc becoming larger than the turbulence in its vicinity. Eventually gap formation occurs, with a transition to type II migration. The existence of significant fluctuations occurring in turbulent discs on long time scales is important for lower mass embedded protoplanets. If significant fluctuations occur on the longest disc evolutionary time scales, convergence of torque running averages for practical purposes will not occur, and the migration behaviour of low mass protoplanets considered as an ensemble would be very different from predictions of type I theory for laminar discs.
We perform numerical simulations of a disc-planet system using various grid-based and smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) codes. The tests are run for a simple setup where Jupiter and Neptune mass planets on a circular orbit open a gap in a protoplanetary disc during a few hundred orbital periods. We compare the surface density contours, potential vorticity and smoothed radial profiles at several times. The disc mass and gravitational torque time evolution are analyzed with high temporal resolution. There is overall consistency between the codes. The density profiles agree within about 5% for the Eulerian simulations while the SPH results predict the correct shape of the gap although have less resolution in the low density regions and weaker planetary wakes. The disc masses after 200 orbital periods agree within 10%. The spread is larger in the tidal torques acting on the planet which agree within a factor 2 at the end of the simulation. In the Neptune case the dispersion in the torques is greater than for Jupiter, possibly owing to the contribution from the not completely cleared region close to the planet.
Protoplanets may be born into dust-rich environments if planetesimals formed through streaming or gravitational instabilities, or if the protoplanetary disc is undergoing mass loss due to disc winds or photoevaporation. Motivated by this possibility, we explore the interaction between low mass planets and dusty protoplanetary discs with focus on disc-planet torques. We implement Lin & Youdins newly developed, purely hydrodynamic model of dusty gas into the PLUTO code to simulate dusty protoplanetary discs with an embedded planet. We find that for imperfectly coupled dust and high metallicity, e.g. Stokes number $10^{-3}$ and dust-to-gas ratio $Sigma_mathrm{d}/Sigma_mathrm{g}=0.5$ , a `bubble develops inside the planets co-orbital region, which introduces unsteadiness in the flow. The resulting disc-planet torques sustain large amplitude oscillations that persists well beyond that in simulations with perfectly coupled dust or low dust-loading, where co-rotation torques are always damped. We show that the desaturation of the co-rotation torques by finite-sized particles is related to potential vorticity generation from the misalignment of dust and gas densities. We briefly discuss possible implications for the orbital evolution of protoplanets in dust-rich discs. We also demonstrate Lin & Youdins dust-free framework reproduces previous results pertaining to dusty protoplanetary discs, including dust-trapping by pressure bumps, dust settling, and the streaming instability.
During the process of planet formation, the planet-discs interactions might excite (or damp) the orbital eccentricity of the planet. In this paper, we present two long ($tsim 3times 10^5$ orbits) numerical simulations: (a) one (with a relatively light disc, $M_{rm d}/M_{rm p}=0.2$) where the eccentricity initially stalls before growing at later times and (b) one (with a more massive disc, $M_{rm d}/M_{rm p}=0.65$) with fast growth and a late decrease of the eccentricity. We recover the well-known result that a more massive disc promotes a faster initial growth of the planet eccentricity. However, at late times the planet eccentricity decreases in the massive disc case, but increases in the light disc case. Both simulations show periodic eccentricity oscillations superimposed on a growing/decreasing trend and a rapid transition between fast and slow pericentre precession. The peculiar and contrasting evolution of the eccentricity of both planet and disc in the two simulations can be understood by invoking a simple toy model where the disc is treated as a second point-like gravitating body, subject to secular planet-planet interaction and eccentricity pumping/damping provided by the disc. We show how the counterintuitive result that the more massive simulation produces a lower planet eccentricity at late times can be understood in terms of the different ratios of the disc-to-planet angular momentum in the two simulations. In our interpretation, at late times the planet eccentricity can increase more in low-mass discs rather than in high-mass discs, contrary to previous claims in the literature.
According to the sequential accretion model, giant planet formation is based first on the formation of a solid core which, when massive enough, can gravitationally bind gas from the nebula to form the envelope. In order to trigger the accretion of gas, the core has to grow up to several Earth masses before the gas component of the protoplanetary disc dissipates. We compute the formation of planets, considering the oligarchic regime for the growth of the solid core. Embryos growing in the disc stir their neighbour planetesimals, exciting their relative velocities, which makes accretion more difficult. We compute the excitation state of planetesimals, as a result of stirring by forming planets, and gas-solid interactions. We find that the formation of giant planets is favoured by the accretion of small planetesimals, as their random velocities are more easily damped by the gas drag of the nebula. Moreover, the capture radius of a protoplanet with a (tiny) envelope is also larger for small planetesimals. However, planets migrate as a result of disc-planet angular momentum exchange, with important consequences for their survival: due to the slow growth of a protoplanet in the oligarchic regime, rapid inward type I migration has important implications on intermediate mass planets that have not started yet their runaway accretion phase of gas. Most of these planets are lost in the central star. Surviving planets have either masses below 10 ME or above several Jupiter masses. To form giant planets before the dissipation of the disc, small planetesimals (~ 0.1 km) have to be the major contributors of the solid accretion process. However, the combination of oligarchic growth and fast inward migration leads to the absence of intermediate mass planets. Other processes must therefore be at work in order to explain the population of extrasolar planets presently known.