Leedham, C.S., Booth, R.A. orcid.org/0000-0002-0364-937X and Clarke, C.J. (2025) Effect of irradiation model on 2D hydrodynamic simulations of self-gravitating protoplanetary discs. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 539 (3). pp. 2780-2789. ISSN: 0035-8711
Abstract
Young protoplanetary discs are expected to be gravitationally unstable, which can drive angular momentum transport as well as be a potential mechanism for planet formation. Gravitational instability is most prevalent in the outer disc where cooling time-scales are short. At large radii, stellar irradiation makes a significant contribution to disc heating and is expected to suppress instability. In this study, we compare two models of implementing irradiation in 2D hydrodynamic simulations of self-gravitating discs: supplying a constant heating rate per unit mass and per unit area of the disc. In the former case, instability is quenched once the stellar irradiation becomes the dominant heating source. In the latter case, we find instability persists under high levels of irradiation, despite large values of the Toomre Q parameter, in agreement with analytic predictions. Fragmentation was able to occur in this regime with the critical cooling time-scale required decreasing as irradiation is increased, corresponding to a maximum threshold for the viscosity parameter: α ∼ 0.03 − 0.09. .
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | hydrodynamics, instabilities, turbulence, planets and satellites: formation, protoplanetary discs |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Physics and Astronomy (Leeds) |
Date Deposited: | 29 Sep 2025 15:04 |
Last Modified: | 29 Sep 2025 15:04 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/mnras/staf644 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:232113 |