Simulations of unstable gaseous disks and the origin of giant planets

2003/01/29 by Lucio Mayer, Thomas Quinn, Mayer, Lucio +5
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #FOS: Physical sciences #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0301591

4 pages, 2 Figures, to appear on the Proceedings of the International Conference "Scientific Frontiers in Research on Extrasolar Planets", ASP Conference Series. Images and movies can be found at http://www.astro.washington.edu/mayer/

arxiv created 2003/01/29 · openalex publication_date 2003/01/29 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We study the evolution of cold, gravitationally unstable protoplanetary gaseous disks performing 3D SPH simulations with up to a million particles on large parallel machines. We show that self-gravitating protoplanets can form in disks with initial Q_min ∼ 1.4 provided that disks are evolved with a locally isothermal equation of state until localized regions reach a sufficiently high density. Lower resolution simulations carried out for as long as a thousand years show that systems of giant protoplanets with masses and orbits comparable to those of the observed extrasolar planets arise naturally.

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