Formation, orbital and thermal evolution, and survival of planetary-mass clumps in the early phase of circumstellar disk evolution

TL;DR

This study uses 3D radiation hydrodynamics simulations to explore the formation, evolution, and fate of planetary-mass clumps in early circumstellar disks, revealing their potential to become brown dwarfs or protostars.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the mass limits, thermal evolution, and survival mechanisms of disk-formed clumps, highlighting the importance of accretion and migration processes.

Findings

Clumps form early during disk evolution and can reach up to 0.03 solar masses.

Most clumps migrate inward and fall onto the protostar, but some survive and undergo second collapse.

Surviving clumps typically become brown dwarfs or protostars, not planets.

Abstract

We report the results of our three-dimensional radiation hydrodynamics simulation of collapsing unmagnetized molecular cloud cores. We investigate the formation and evolution of the circumstellar disk and the clumps formed by disk fragmentation. Our simulation shows that disk fragmentation occurs in the early phase of circumstellar disk evolution and many clumps form. The clump can be represented by a polytrope sphere of index $n \sim 3$ and $n \gtrsim 4$ at central temperature $T_c \lesssim100$ K and $T_c \gtrsim 100$ K, respectively. We demonstrate, numerically and theoretically, that the maximum mass of the clump, beyond which it inevitably collapses, is $\sim 0.03 M_{\odot}$. The entropy of the clump increases during its evolution, implying that evolution is chiefly determined by mass accretion from the disk rather than by radiative cooling. Although most of the clumps rapidly migrate inward and finally fall onto the protostar, a few clumps remain in the disk. The central density and temperature of the surviving clump rapidly increase and the clump undergoes a second collapse within 1000 - 2000 years after its formation. In our simulation, three second cores of masses $0.2\msun$, $0.15\msun$, and $0.06\msun$ formed. These are protostars or brown dwarfs rather than protoplanets. For the clumps to survive as planetary-mass objects, the rapid mass accretion should be prevented by some mechanisms.