Giant Planet Formation by Disk Instability: A Comparison Simulation With An Improved Radiative Scheme

Abstract

There has been disagreement currently about whether cooling in protoplanetary disks can be sufficiently fast to induce the formation of gas giant protoplanets via gravitational instabilities. Simulations by our own group and others indicate that this method of planet formation does not work for disks around young, low- mass stars inside several tens of AU, while simulations by other groups show fragmentation into protoplanetary clumps in this region. To allow direct comparison in hopes of isolating the cause of the differences, we here present a high resolution three-dimensional hydrodynamics simulation of a protoplanetary disk, where the disk model, initial perturbation, and simulation conditions are essentially identical to those used in a set of simulations by Boss. As in earlier papers by the same author, Boss (2007, hereafter B07) purports to show that cooling is fast enough to produce protoplanetary clumps. Here, we evolve the same B07 disk using an improved version of one of our own radiative schemes and find that the disk does not fragment in our code but instead quickly settles into a state with only low amplitude nonaxisymmetric structure, which persists for at least several outer disk rotations. We see no rapid radiative or convective cooling. We conclude that the differences in results are due to different treatments of regions at and above the disk photosphere, and we explain at least one way in which the scheme in B07 may lead to artificially fast cooling.

accepted by ApJ Letters

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Cited by in corpus (26)

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• Formation of Giant Planets by Disk Instability on Wide Orbits Around Protostars with Varied Masses
• Gravitational Instabilities in Two-Component Galaxy Disks with Gas Dissipation
• Origin of apparent period variations in eclipsing post-common-envelope binaries
• On The Possibility of Enrichment and Differentiation in Gas Giants During Birth by Disk Instability
• Tidally induced brown dwarf and planet formation in circumstellar discs
• Migration of Gas Giant Planets in Gravitationally Unstable Disks
• Fragment Production and Survival in Irradiated Disks: A Comprehensive Cooling Criterion
• The Heavy Element Composition of Disk Instability Planets Can Range From Sub- to Super-Nebular
• The Effects of Metallicity, and Grain Growth and Settling on the Early Evolution of Gaseous Protoplanets
• Properties and occurrence rates of $Kepler$ exoplanet candidates as a function of host star metallicity from the DR25 catalog
• Metallicity of the Massive Protoplanets Around HR 8799 If Formed by Gravitational Instability
• Turbulent Disks are Never Stable: Fragmentation and Turbulence-Promoted Planet Formation
• Chemistry in a gravitationally unstable protoplanetary disc
• On the Evolution and Survival of Protoplanets Embedded in a Protoplanetary Disk
• From Disks to Planets
• The SOPHIE search for northern extrasolar planets. X. Detection and characterization of giant planets by the dozen
• A Hot Gap Around Jupiter's Orbit in the Solar Nebula
• The Formation and Dynamics of Super-Earth Planets
• Circumstellar disks and planets. Science cases for next-generation optical/infrared long-baseline interferometers
• The Effect of Protoplanetary Disk Cooling Times on the Formation of Gas Giant Planets by Gravitational Instability
• Super-Earths: A New Class of Planetary Bodies
• Giant Planet Formation
• Structure of Protoplanetary Discs with Magnetically-driven Winds
• Direct detection and spectral characterization of outer exoplanets with the SPICA coronagraph instrument (SCI)
• Constraint on the giant planet production by core accretion