Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Polar Alignment Of A Protoplanetary Disc Around An Eccentric Binary – Iii. Effect Of Disc Mass, Rebecca G. Martin, Stephen H. Lubow

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

An initially sufficiently misaligned low-mass protoplanetary disc around an eccentric binary undergoes damped nodal oscillations of tilt angle and longitude of ascending node. Dissipation causes evolution towards a stationary state of polar alignment in which the disc lies perpendicular to the binary orbital plane with angular momentum aligned to the eccentricity vector of the binary. We use hydrodynamic simulations and analytical methods to investigate how the mass of the disc affects this process. The simulations suggest that a disc with non-zero mass settles into a stationary state in the frame of the binary, the generalized polar state, at somewhat lower …