2006/11/28 by Shugo Michikoshi, Shu-ichiro Inutsuka, Shu‐ichiro Inutsuka +2 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Dust and Plasma Wave Phenomena #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/511128
published as Astrophys.J.657:521-532,2007 · 34 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ
arxiv created 2006/11/28 · openalex publication_date 2007/03/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
We performed N -body simulations of a dust layer without a gas component and examined the formation process of planetesimals. We found that the formation process of planetesimals can be divided into three stages: the formation of nonaxisymmetric wakelike structures, the creation of aggregates, and the collisional growth of the aggregates. Finally, a few large aggregates and many small aggregates are formed. The mass of the largest aggregate is larger than the mass predicted by the linear perturbation theory. We examined the dependence of system parameters on the planetesimal formation. We found that the mass of the largest aggregates increases as the size of the computational domain increases. However, the ratio of the aggregate mass to the total mass M aggr / M total is almost constant, 0.8-0.9. The mass of the largest aggregate increases with the optical depth and the Hill radius of particles.