Stefan Adelbert (Germany)
adelbert @ mpia.de
Realistic cooling times in protoplanetary disks
Planet formation in disks around young stars heavily depends on the angular momentum transport driving the disk's evolution. This angular momentum transport may be driven by turbulence caused by a range of different processes, several of which (e.g. convective overstability, vertical shear instability, zombie vortex instability) depend on the timescale at which the gas in the disk cools down.
This again is dependent on the distribution of dust grains in the disk, which in turn is determined by the strength of local turbulence redistributing these dust grains, resulting in a circular interdependence. In the past, a lot of studies assumed constant values for the angular momentum transport, but recent studies have shown that this interdependence between dust distribution and turbulence via the local cooling times can result in significant variations.
Combining 1-dimensional models of dust distributions with highly accurate 3-dimensional hydrodynamical simulation allows us to determine realistic cooling times of the gas at different points in the disk allowing a more accurate study of turbulence in the disk.
Supervisor: Hubert Klahr (MPIA)
