1307.6910 (Yusuke Tsukamoto et al.)

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

Yusuke Tsukamoto, Masahiro N. Machida, Shuichiro Inutsuka

We report the results of our three-dimensional radiation hydrodynamics simulation of collapsing 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 clumps form. Once the clump forms, its central density and temperature rapidly increase and it undergoes a second collapse within the next 1000 -- 2000 years. 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. 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.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.6910