Influence of viscosity and the adiabatic index on planetary migration

TL;DR

This study investigates how viscosity and the adiabatic index influence planetary migration in protoplanetary disks using 3D simulations, revealing that higher viscosity promotes outward migration and affects the zero-torque radius.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how different viscosity prescriptions and adiabatic indices impact disk structure and planetary migration, highlighting the importance of these parameters in planet formation models.

Findings

Higher viscosity leads to higher disk temperatures.

Outward migration is sustained only with large viscosity.

The zero-torque radius shifts with changes in viscosity and adiabatic index.

Abstract

The strength and direction of migration of low mass embedded planets depends on the disk's thermodynamic state, where the internal dissipation is balanced by radiative transport, and the migration can be directed outwards, a process which extends the lifetime of growing embryos. Very important parameters determining the structure of disks, and hence the direction of migration, are the viscosity and the adiabatic index. In this paper we investigate the influence of different viscosity prescriptions (alpha-type and constant) and adiabatic indices on disk structures and how this affects the migration rate of planets embedded in such disks. We perform 3D numerical simulations of accretion disks with embedded planets. We use the explicit/implicit hydrodynamical code NIRVANA that includes full tensor viscosity and radiation transport in the flux-limited diffusion approximation, as well as a proper equation of state for molecular hydrogen. The migration of embedded 20Earthmass planets is studied. Low-viscosity disks have cooler temperatures and the migration rates of embedded planets tend toward the isothermal limit. In these disks, planets migrate inwards even in the fully radiative case. The effect of outward migration can only be sustained if the viscosity in the disk is large. Overall, the differences between the treatments for the equation of state seem to play a more important role in disks with higher viscosity. A change in the adiabatic index and in the viscosity changes the zero-torque radius that separates inward from outward migration. For larger viscosities, temperatures in the disk become higher and the zero-torque radius moves to larger radii, allowing outward migration of a 20 Earth-mass planet to persist over an extended radial range. In combination with large disk masses, this may allow for an extended period of the outward migration of growing protoplanetary cores.