Global Protoplanetary Disk Simulations: Dead Zone Formation and FUor Outbursts

TL;DR

This paper presents global hydrodynamic simulations of protoplanetary disks that reveal the formation of dead zones and FUor-like outbursts, enhancing understanding of early disk evolution and episodic accretion events.

Contribution

It introduces a novel simulation approach combining adaptive alpha prescription and collapse phase modeling to study dead zone formation and outbursts.

Findings

Dead zones form at a few au in the simulations.

FUor-like outbursts are triggered by dead zone instabilities.

Simulations match observed episodic accretion phenomena.

Abstract

We conducted global hydrodynamic simulations of protoplanetary disk evolution with an adaptive Shakura-Sunyaev {\alpha} prescription to represent the layered disk structure, and starting with the collapse phase of the molecular cloud. With the canonical values of model parameters, self-consistent dead zones formed at the scale of a few au. The instabilities associated with the dead zone and corresponding outbursts, similar to FUor eruptions, were also observed in the simulations.