Protostars and Planets VI, Heidelberg, July 15-20, 2013

Poster 1H003

Zooming in on Protoplanetary Disks

Küffmeier, Michael (Niels Bohr Institute and Centre for Star and Planet Formation, Univ. of Copenhagen)
Nordlund, Åke (Niels Bohr Institute and Centre for Star and Planet Formation, Univ. of Copenhagen)
Haugbølle, Troels (Centre for Star and Planet Formation, Univ. of Copenhagen)
Padoan, Paolo (ICREA, & ICCC, Univ. of Barcelona)

Abstract:
We show visualizations of simulations obtained by the adaptive mesh-refinement (AMR) code RAMSES. Our visualization illustrates a zoom from models of ∼ 1e5 solar mass Giant Molecular Clouds to protoplanetary disk scales of about 0.015 AU, by selectively following the collapse of a few 1-2 solar mass protostellar systems. The models realized by the adaptive mesh-refinement (AMR) code RAMSES and their visualizations demonstrate the extremely important roles played by magnetic fields in this process. We show that magnetic fields carry away a lot of the excess angular momentum during the collapse phase and provide the ingredients necessary to create bipolar outflows, namely collimated jets and wider angle disk winds. Furthermore, the presence of magnetic fields in wound up, nearly force-free form in the protoplanetary disks can strongly influence and suppress the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability driven turbulence. This turbulence is otherwise associated with the speed difference between a dust layer concentrated near the disk midplane and the vertically more extended gas, rotating slower than the dust layer, because of the partial support by radial gas pressure gradients. Subsequently, this may allow the original Goldreich-Ward mechanism to work, thus enabling a fast path to planetesimal formation.

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