Hi All

Pre-print today...

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0506216
From: Sebastien Fromang [view email]
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2005 20:00:34 GMT (675kb)

The effect of MHD turbulence on massive protoplanetary disk fragmentation
Authors: Sebastien Fromang
Comments: 8 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics

Massive disk fragmentation has been suggested to be one of the mechanisms leading to the formation of giant planets. While it has been heavily studied in quiescent hydrodynamic disks, the effect of MHD turbulence arising from the magnetorotational instability (MRI) has never been investigated.

[snip]

As the resolution is increased, the most unstable wavelengths of the MRI are better resolved and small scale angular momentum transport starts to play a role: fragments are found to form in massive and turbulent disks in that case. All of these results indicate that there is a complicated interaction between gravitational instabilities and MHD turbulence that influences disk fragmentation processes.

[my comment]...as the resolution improves bound fragments in the disk arise, but not at lower res. They're smaller than in straight MHD-free sims of the disks. And with MHD, the collapsing Jeans Mass lumps might be able to dump excess angular momentum more efficiently than in MHD-free scenarios. Thus recapitulating the Sun-planet formation sequence in minature.

Cool.

Adam