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Paper: Giant Planet Formation from Disk Instability. Cooling and Heating
Volume: 321, Extrasolar Planets: Today and Tomorrow
Page: 290
Authors: Mayer, L.; Wadsley, J.; Quinn, T.; Stadel, J.
Abstract: We present the results of high resolution SPH simulations of the evolution of gravitationally unstable protoplanetary disks. We report on calculations in which the disk is evolved using a locally isothermal or adiabatic equation of state (with shock heating), and also on new simulations in which cooling and heating by radiation are explicitly modeled. We find that disks with a minimum Toomre parameter < 1.4 fragment into several gravitationally bound protoplanets with masses from below to a few Jupiter masses. This is confirmed also in runs where the disk is given a quiet start, growing gradually in mass over several orbital times. A cooling time comparable to the orbital time is needed to achieve fragmentation, for disk masses in the range 0:08 – 0.1MSolar. After about 30 orbital times, merging between the bound condensations always leads to 2-3 protoplanets on quite eccentric orbits.
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