Modeling Dust Emission of HL Tau Disk Based on Planet-Disk Interactions

TL;DR

This study models the dust ring and gap structures in the HL Tau protoplanetary disk using hydrodynamic simulations with embedded planets, matching ALMA observations to infer planet properties and discuss implications for planet formation.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive simulation approach combining hydrodynamics and radiative transfer to replicate observed disk features with multiple embedded planets.

Findings

Three planets with specific masses fit the observed dust structures.

The model suggests possible planet formation scenarios in HL Tau.

Limitations of the current scenario are discussed.

Abstract

We use extensive global two-dimensional hydrodynamic disk gas+dust simulations with embedded planets, coupled with three dimensional radiative transfer calculations, to model the dust ring and gap structures in the HL Tau protoplanetary disk observed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA). We include the self-gravity of disk gas and dust components and make reasonable choices of disk parameters, assuming an already settled dust distribution and no planet migration. We can obtain quite adequate fits to the observed dust emission using three planets with masses 0.35, 0.17, and 0.26 $M_{Jup}$ at 13.1, 33.0, and 68.6 AU, respectively. Implications for the planet formation as well as the limitations of this scenario are discussed.