The Effects of a Planet in Protoplanetary Disks
Sarah Maddison, Laure Fouchet & Jean-Francois Gonzalez
The gravity of a planet in a protoplanetary disk can modify the disk's gas distribution. If the planet is massive enough, it can create a gap in the disk.
Tidal torques resulting from the gravitational perturbation of the planet lead to an exchange in angular momentum which creates a gap around the planet.
Using our 3D gas+dust hydrodynamics code, we follow the evolution of a dusty disk with an embedded planet to study the effects of the planet on both the gas and the dust disk. Because the gas and dust interact via aerodynamic drag, the distribution of the dust phase differs from that of the gas (except for the very smallest grains). Our simulations show that planet has a stronger effect on the dust disk than the gas disk, producing a stricking gap whose morphology depends on the planet mass as well as the size of the dust grains. Observations of protoplanetary disks at sub-millimetre and millimetre wavelengths detect the thermal emission from the dust grains, which means that new instruments like ALMA should be able to find signatures of planets by detecting the planetary gaps in dusty disks.
Image by Jean-Francois Gonzalez
Journal articles:
- Planet gaps in the dust layer of 3D protoplanetary disks: II. Observability with ALMA
Gonzalez, Pinte, Maddison, Menard, Fouchet (2012), A&A, inpress
- Planet gaps in the dust layer of 3D protoplanetary disks: I. Hydrodynamical simulations of T Tauri disks
Fouchet, Gonzalez, Maddison (2010), A&A, 518, A16
- Gap formation in the dust layer of 3D protoplanetary disks, Maddison, Fouchet & Gonzalez (2007), A&SS, 311, 3
- The effect of a planet on the dust distribution in a 3D protoplanetary disk, Fouchet, Maddison, Gonzalez & Murray (2007), A&A, 474, 1037
Media articles:
Last updated: Tuesday, 11-Sep-2012 09:09:03 AEST
smaddison @ swin.edu.au
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