The Effect of the Approach to Gas Disk Gravitational Instability on the Rapid Formation of Gas Giant Planets

Abstract

Abstract Observational evidence suggests that gas disk instability may be responsible for the formation of at least some gas giant exoplanets, particularly massive or distant gas giants. With regard to close-in gas giants, Boss used the β cooling approximation to calculate hydrodynamical models of inner gas disk instability, finding that provided disks with low values of the initial minimum Toomre stability parameter (i.e., Q i < 2 inside 20 au) form, fragmentation into self-gravitating clumps could occur even for β as high as 100 (i.e., extremely slow cooling). Those results implied that the evolution of disks toward low Q i must be taken into account. This paper presents such models: initial disk masses of 0.091 M ⊙ extending from 4 to 20 au around a 1 M ⊙ protostar, with a range (1–100) of β cooling parameters, the same as in Boss, but with all the disks starting with Q i = 2.7, i.e., gravitationally stable, and allowed to cool from their initial outer disk temperature of 180 K to as low as 40 K. All the disks eventually fragment into at least one dense clump. The clumps were again replaced by virtual protoplanets (VPs) and the masses and orbits of the resulting ensemble of VPs compare favorably with those of Boss, supporting the claim that disk instability can form gas giants rapidly inside 20 au, provided that sufficiently massive protoplanetary disks exist.