Nonlinear Outcome of Coagulation Instability in Protoplanetary Disks II: Dust Ring Formation Mediated by Backreaction and Fragmentation

TL;DR

This paper investigates how coagulation instability, influenced by backreaction and fragmentation, leads to dust ring formation and potentially promotes planetesimal formation in protoplanetary disks.

Contribution

It introduces numerical simulations that incorporate backreaction and fragmentation effects, revealing regulation of dust concentration and conditions for efficient dust growth.

Findings

Dust-to-gas ratio increases to ~10^{-2}

Dust rings have masses of 0.5-1.5 Earth masses

Dust grains can grow beyond fragmentation barrier

Abstract

In our previous work (Paper I), we demonstrated that coagulation instability results in dust concentration against depletion due to the radial drift and accelerates dust growth locally. In this work (Paper II), we perform numerical simulations of coagulation instability taking into account effects of backreaction to gas and collisional fragmentation of dust grains. We find that the slowdown of the dust drift due to backreaction regulates dust concentration in the nonlinear growth phase of coagulation instability. The dust-to-gas surface density ratio increases from $10^{-3}$ up to $\sim10^{-2}$. Each resulting dust ring tends to have mass of $\simeq0.5M_{\oplus}-1.5M_{\oplus}$ in our disk model. In contrast to Paper I, the dust surface density profile shows a local plateau structure at each dust ring. In spite of the regulation at the nonlinear growth, the efficient dust concentration reduces their collision velocity. As a result, dust grains can grow beyond the fragmentation barrier, and the dimensionless stopping time reaches unity as in Paper I. The necessary condition for the efficient dust growth is (1) weak turbulence of $\alpha<1\times10^{-3}$ and (2) a large critical velocity for dust fragmentation ($> 1$ m/s). The efficient dust concentration in outer regions will reduce the inward pebble flux and is expected to decelerate the planet formation via the pebble accretion. We also find that the resulting rings can be unstable to secular gravitational instability (GI). The subsequent secular GI promotes planetesimal formation. We thus expect that a combination of these instabilities is a promising mechanism for dust-ring and planetesimal formation.