Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Diffusion And Concentration Of Solids In The Dead Zone Of A Protoplanetary Disk, Chao-Chin Yang, Mordecai-Mark Mac Low, Anders Johansen

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

The streaming instability is a promising mechanism to drive the formation of planetesimals in protoplanetary disks. To trigger this process, it has been argued that sedimentation of solids onto the mid-plane needs to be efficient, and therefore that a quiescent gaseous environment is required. It is often suggested that dead-zone or disk-wind structure created by non-ideal magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) effects meets this requirement. However, simulations have shown that the mid-plane of a dead zone is not completely quiescent. In order to examine the concentration of solids in such an environment, we use the local-shearing-box approximation to simulate a particlegas system with …