Type I Planet Migration in Weakly Magnetized Laminar Disks

Abstract

AbstractPlanet migration plays a crucial role in shaping planetary systems, and has therefore received a lot of attention in recent years in an effort to compare the statistical properties of observed exoplanets with the predictions of planet formation and migration theories. By modifying the propagation properties of the waves induced by the planet in the disk, the presence of a strong magnetic field can dramatically influence planet migration, in some cases reversing its direction. The more realistic case of a weaker magnetic field is less clear, although turbulent MHD simulations by Baruteau et al. (2011) suggest an effect on the corotation torque. Here, we present a study of the corotation torque in 2D laminar disks containing a toroidal magnetic field. We performed MHD simulations of the interaction between the magnetic field and the horseshoe motion of the gas, and found that this results in an additional corotation torque. This additional torque can be strong enough to reverse migration even for a field which pressure is only one percent of the thermal pressure. We speculate that this could lead to long range outward migration in the outer part of protoplanetary disks and may explain the observations by direct imaging of planets at several tens of AU from their star like the 4 planets system HR 8799.