Abstract
The occurrence of the baroclinic instability in protoplanetary disks is investigated using fully compressible numerical simulations. We study the role of disk stratification and heat transfer in the development of the instability. Vortices are found to form whatever the importance of the stratification but to grow and persist only when the disk is not stably stratified. In the presence of thermal diffusion the baroclinic instability leads to hollow vortices that decays into transient vortical structures.
Highlights
In this paper we study the possibility to form vortices in protoplanetary disks with the goal to explore their role in planet formation
The baroclinic instability is a well known mechanism in geophysical flows that should play an important role in the evolution of accretion disks
The problem was clarified by Petersen el al [7]using anelastic numerical simulations but the way to trigger the instability and its non-linear character was found by Lesur & Papaloizou [6]
Summary
In this paper we study the possibility to form vortices in protoplanetary disks with the goal to explore their role in planet formation. The baroclinic instability is a well known mechanism in geophysical flows that should play an important role in the evolution of accretion disks. The problem was clarified by Petersen el al [7]using anelastic numerical simulations but the way to trigger the instability and its non-linear character was found by Lesur & Papaloizou [6]. These authors have shown that vortices can grow due to a baroclinic feedback mechanism that is effective only when stratification is unstable and when heat transfer is present in the disk. Our objective is to revisit the problem using fully compressible numerical simulations
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