Dust settling against hydrodynamic turbulence in protoplanetary discs

Abstract

Enhancing the local dust-to-gas ratio in protoplanetary discs is a necessary first step to planetesimal formation. In laminar discs, dust settling is an efficient mechanism to raise the dust-to-gas ratio at the disc midplane. However, turbulence, if present, can stir and lift dust particles, which ultimately hinders planetesimal formation. In this work, we study dust settling in protoplanetary discs with hydrodynamic turbulence sustained by the vertical shear instability. We perform axisymmetric numerical simulations to investigate the effect of turbulence, particle size, and solid abundance or metallicity on dust settling. We highlight the positive role of drag forces exerted onto the gas by the dust for settling to overcome the vertical shear instability. In typical disc models we find particles with a Stokes number $\sim 10^{-3}$ can sediment to $\lesssim 10\%$ of the gas scale-height, provided that $\Sigma_\mathrm{d}/\Sigma_\mathrm{g}\gtrsim 0.02$-$0.05$, where $\Sigma_\mathrm{d,g}$ are the surface densities in dust and gas, respectively. This coincides with the metallicity condition for small particles to undergo clumping via the streaming instability. Super-solar metallicities, at least locally, are thus required for a self-consistent picture of planetesimal formation. Our results also imply that dust rings observed in protoplanetary discs should have smaller scale-heights than dust gaps, provided that the metallicity contrast between rings and gaps exceed the corresponding contrast in gas density.