Instabilities at planetary gap edges in 3D self-gravitating disks

Abstract

Numerical simulations are presented to study the stability of gaps opened by giant planets in 3D self-gravitating disks. In weakly self-gravitating disks, a few vortices develop at the gap edge and merge on orbital time-scales. The result is one large but weak vortex with Rossby number -0.01. In moderately self-gravitating disks, more vortices develop and their merging is resisted on dynamical time-scales. Self-gravity can sustain multi-vortex configurations, with Rossby number -0.2 to -0.1, over a time-scale of order 100 orbits. Self-gravity also enhances the vortex vertical density stratification, even in disks with initial Toomre parameter of order 10. However, vortex formation is suppressed in strongly self-gravitating disks and replaced by a global spiral instability associated with the gap edge which develops during gap formation.

Proceeding for `Instabilities and Structures in Proto-Planetary Disks' workshop. Includes additional results analysis of Lin (2012, arXiv:1205.4034) and an additional simulation. Talk pdf available at http://cita.utoronto.ca/~mklin924/talks.html

References in corpus (3)

• Embryos grown in the dead zone: Assembling the first protoplanetary cores in low mass self-gravitating circumstellar disks of gas and solids
• Vortex and spiral instabilities at gap edges in three-dimensional self-gravitating disc-satellite simulations
• The potential impact of groove modes on Type II planetary migration