DiskTorqueOnPlanets · New Frontiers in Modeling Planet-Disk Interactions: from Disk Thermodynamics to Multi-Planet Systems
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2017-09-01 → 2019-08-31
- EU contribution
- €212,195
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
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Results in brief
New Frontiers in Modeling Planet-Disk Interactions: from Disk Thermodynamics to Multi-Planet Systems
For thousands of years, humankind had only been aware of the handful of planets composing our Solar System. This changed dramatically over the last two decades with the discovery of several thousand planets around nearby stars. Most of these, so-called exoplanets, show remarkable differences when compared to the Solar System. We believe that processes leading to the formation of planets, combined with environmental effects associated with the protoplanetary disk in which they form, play a fundamental role in sculpting planets and planetary systems. Thus, in order to understand the wide diversity of planets we observe, and contextualize our Solar System, it is critical to study and characterize such mechanisms self-consistently together with the dynamical evolution of the protoplanetary disk. One of the processes that may play an important role is the so-called planetary migration due to the mutual gravitational interaction between the planet and the disk. As a planetary embryo grows accreting material from the protoplanetary disk, it exerts a gravitational force onto the disk which, by the law of action-reaction, exerts an opposite force onto the planet. This force accelerates the planet and makes it move. So far, it is not clear observationally, whether migration due to planet-disk interaction occurs over large spatial scales during the formation of planetary systems. Identifying and characterizing the various mechanisms that set the speed and direction of planet migration demands a thorough understanding of the physics and dynamics governing protoplanetary disks and planets. In this context, the core of the project was to study the contribution of physical mechanisms that have been overlooked until now and could play a significant role in this story. One of the highlights of the project was the realization that dust (known to constitute only a small fraction of the protoplanetary disks mass) may play an important role in the early dynamical history of planetary embryos.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Recent space missions such as CoRoT and Kepler have revolutionized exoplanetary science. Today, we know of thousands of systems with awide diversity of architectures, proving that our Solar System is not typical. Understanding how these systems form and evolve is currently one of the most active area of astrophysics. The processes that dictate the dynamics of planets play a fundamental role in shaping the architecture of the systems we observe. In the present paradigm, as planets accrete mass from the primordial disk, they are subject to interactions with it and with other planets. These interactions exerttorques, and make the planets migrate. Disk-planet interactions depend strongly on the physical processes governing the dynamics of the disk. I demonstrated a clear example of this in a recent paper in Nature, showing that the disk heating by an accreting embryo have a strong impact on the torques. This proposal has two objectives with the potential to produce a leap forward in our understanding of the long-term evolution of planetary systems. (i) I will produce the most advanced framework to date for investigating planetary migration in magnetohydrodynamic disk simulations, including ohmic, ambipolar andHall effects. I will do this self-consistently by considering the chemical evolution of the dusty gas. Calculating its ionization state and opacity, will moreover allow me to incorporate radiation more realistically. (ii) I will build on a new technique that I have developed, the use of 3D radially moving meshes. This groundbreaking technique enables to follow the migration of multiple planets allowing studying their long-range migration. I want to carry out this research program at The Niels Bohr Institute. The combined expertise of the groups in Copenhagen, together with their impressive computational resources, provide an unparalleled environment to achieve my research goals and develop myself as a leading international figure in this rapidly evolving field.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET · KOBENHAVNCoordinatorDenmark
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union