Puffed up Edges of Planet-opened Gaps in Protoplanetary Disks. I. hydrodynamic simulations

Dust gaps and rings appear ubiquitous in bright protoplanetary disks. Disk-planet interaction with dust-trapping at the edges of planet-induced gaps is one plausible explanation. However, the sharpness of some observed dust rings indicate that sub-mm-sized dust grains have settled to a thin layer in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2021-03
Main Authors: Bi, Jiaqing, Min-Kai, Lin, Dong, Ruobing
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Dust
Gas flow
Planet detection
Planet formation
Planets
Protoplanetary disks
Sharpness
Simulation
Vertical distribution
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Dust gaps and rings appear ubiquitous in bright protoplanetary disks. Disk-planet interaction with dust-trapping at the edges of planet-induced gaps is one plausible explanation. However, the sharpness of some observed dust rings indicate that sub-mm-sized dust grains have settled to a thin layer in some systems. We test whether or not such dust around gas gaps opened by planets can remain settled by performing three-dimensional, dust-plus-gas simulations of protoplanetary disks with an embedded planet. We find planets massive enough to open gas gaps stir small, sub-mm-sized dust grains to high disk elevations at the gap edges, where the dust scale-height can reach ~70% of the gas scale-height. We attribute this dust 'puff-up' to the planet-induced meridional gas flows previously identified by Fung & Chiang and others. We thus emphasize the importance of explicit 3D simulations to obtain the vertical distribution of sub-mm-sized grains around gas gaps opened by massive planets. We caution that the gas-gap-opening planet interpretation of well-defined dust rings is only self-consistent with large grains exceeding mm in size.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2103.09254