Seminar by Callum Fairbairn, IAS
Dust acts as an important probe of protoplanetary disks; both illuminating substructures and establishing the chemical/thermal equilibrium. However, these dusty processes are also complicated by diverse dynamical processes as grains interact with the background gas — drifting, turbulently mixing, fragmenting, and coagulating. Typically, studies consider these processes in the context of classical flat, circular, and coplanar disks. However, generally, disks can become warped and distorted. This introduces additional complexities as oscillatory internal gas flow fields give rise to distinct dynamics. Here, I will share preliminary results where a gaseous instability leads to efficient dust clumping in warped disks. However, for low-amplitude warps and high dust-to-gas loadings, this instability can be shut off.
Host: Jane Huang