Flux-Limited Diffusion Approximation Models of Giant Planet Formation by Disk Instability. II. Quadrupled Spatial Resolution

Abstract

While collisional accumulation is nearly universally accepted as the formation mechanism of rock and ice worlds, the situation regarding gas giant planet formation is more nuanced. Gas accretion by solid cores formed by collisional accumulation is the generally favored mechanism, but observations increasingly suggest that gas disk gravitational instability might explain the formation of at least the massive or wide-orbit gas giant exoplanets. This paper continues a series aimed at refining three-dimensional (3D) hydrodynamical models of disk instabilities, where the handling of the gas thermodynamics is a crucial factor. Boss (2017, 2019, 2021) used the $\beta$ cooling approximation (Gammie 2001) to calculate 3D models of disks with initial masses of 0.091 $M_{\odot }$ extending from 4 to 20 au around 1 $M_{\odot }$ protostars. Here we employ 3D flux-limited diffusion (FLD) approximation models of the same disks, in order to provide a superior treatment of disk gas thermodynamics. The new models have quadrupled spatial resolution compared to previous 3D FLD models (Boss 2008, 2012), in both the radial and azimuthal spherical coordinates, resulting in the highest spatial resolution 3D FLD models to date. The new models continue to support the hypothesis that such disks can form self-gravitating, dense clumps capable of contracting to form gas giant protoplanets, and suggest that the FLD models yield similar numbers of clumps as $\beta$ cooling models with $\beta \sim$ 1 to $\sim$ 10, including the critical value of $\beta$ = 3 for fragmentation proposed by Gammie (2001).

arXiv comment26 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables, accepted by ApJ. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2103.02566

References in corpus (32)

• Streaming Instabilities in Protoplanetary Disks
• Kepler Mission Design, Realized Photometric Performance, and Early Science
• Nonlinear Outcome of Gravitational Instability in Cooling, Gaseous Disks
• Concentrating small particles in protoplanetary disks through the streaming instability
• Clumps in the Outer Disk by Disk Instability: Why They are Initially Gas Giants and the Legacy of Disruption
• The Occurrence of Rocky Habitable Zone Planets Around Solar-Like Stars from Kepler Data
• Fragmentation of gravitationally unstable gaseous protoplanetary disks with radiative transfer
• Non-convergence of the critical cooling timescale for fragmentation of self-gravitating discs
• Numerical requirements for simulations of self gravitating and non-self gravitating disks
• Searching the Entirety of Kepler Data. II. Occurrence Rate Estimates for FGK Stars
• Heavy metal rules. I. Exoplanet incidence and metallicity
• Exploring the conditions required to form giant planets via gravitational instability in massive protoplanetary discs
• Testing Disk Instability Models for Giant Planet Formation
• On the fragmentation criteria of self-gravitating protoplanetary discs
• Circumplanetary disks around young giant planets: a comparison between core-accretion and disk instability
• The fragmentation criteria in local vertically stratified self-gravitating disk simulations
• Planet Formation: An Optimized Population-Synthesis Approach
• Formation of intermediate-mass planets via magnetically-controlled disk fragmentation
• Flux-Limited Diffusion Approximation Models of Giant Planet Formation by Disk Instability
• Rapid Formation of Jupiter and Wide-Orbit Exoplanets in Disks with Pressure Bumps
• N-body simulations of planet formation via pebble accretion II. How various giant planets form
• The Effect of Protoplanetary Disk Cooling Times on the Formation of Gas Giant Planets by Gravitational Instability
• Analytical Solutions for Radiative Transfer: Implications for Giant Planet Formation by Disk Instability
• A two-step gravitational cascade for the fragmentation of self-gravitating discs
• Orbital Migration of Protoplanets in a Marginally Gravitationally Unstable Disk
• The Role of the Cooling Prescription for Disk Fragmentation: Numerical Convergence & Critical Cooling Parameter in Self-Gravitating Disks
• Efficient radiative transfer techniques in hydrodynamic simulations
• The Effect of the Approach to Gas Disk Gravitational Instability on the Rapid Formation of Gas Giant Planets
• The California Legacy Survey II. Occurrence of Giant Planets Beyond the Ice line
• Chemical composition of stars with massive planets
• The Effect of the Approach to Gas Disk Gravitational Instability on the Rapid Formation of Gas Giant Planets. II. Quadrupled Spatial Resolution
• Testing the effect of resolution on gravitational fragmentation with Lagrangian hydrodynamic schemes

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Orbital Migration of Protoplanets in a Marginally Gravitationally Unstable Disk. II. Migration, Merging, and Ejection
• DIPSY: A new Disc Instability Population SYnthesis, II. The Populations of Companions Formed Through Disc Instability
• Searching for Planets Orbiting Vega with the James Webb Space Telescope