ABSTRACT The streaming instability is a fundamental process that can drive dust–gas dynamics and ultimately planetesimal formation in protoplanetary discs. As a linear instability, it has been shown that its growth with a distribution of dust sizes can be classified into two distinct regimes, fast- and slow-growth, depending on the dust-size distribution and the total dust-to-gas density ratio ϵ. Using numerical simulations of an unstratified disc, we bring three cases in different regimes into non-linear saturation. We find that the saturation states of the two fast-growth cases are similar to its single-species counterparts. The one with maximum dimensionless stopping time τs,max = 0.1 and ϵ = 2 drives turbulent vertical dust–gas vortices, while the other with τs,max = 2 and ϵ = 0.2 leads to radial traffic jams and filamentary structures of dust particles. The dust density distribution for the former is flat in low densities, while the one for the latter has a low-end cut-off. By contrast, the one slow-growth case results in a virtually quiescent state. Moreover, we find that in the fast-growth regime, significant dust segregation by size occurs, with large particles moving towards dense regions while small particles remain in the diffuse regions, and the mean radial drift of each dust species is appreciably altered from the (initial) drag-force equilibrium. The former effect may skew the spectral index derived from multiwavelength observations and change the initial size distribution of a pebble cloud for planetesimal formation. The latter along with turbulent diffusion may influence the radial transport and mixing of solid materials in young protoplanetary discs.
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Streaming instability with multiple dust species – I. Favourable conditions for the linear growth
ABSTRACT A recent study suggests that the streaming instability, one of the leading mechanisms for driving the formation of planetesimals, may not be as efficient as previously thought. Under some disc conditions, the growth time-scale of the instability can be longer than the disc lifetime when multiple dust species are considered. To further explore this finding, we use both linear analysis and direct numerical simulations with gas fluid and dust particles to mutually validate and study the unstable modes of the instability in more detail. We extend the previously studied parameter space by one order of magnitude in both the range of the dust-size distribution [Ts, min, Ts, max] and the total solid-to-gas mass ratio ε and introduce a third dimension with the slope q of the size distribution. We find that the fast-growth regime and the slow-growth regime are distinctly separated in the ε–Ts, max space, while this boundary is not appreciably sensitive to q or Ts, min. With a wide range of dust sizes present in the disc (e.g. Ts, min ≲ 10−3), the growth rate in the slow-growth regime decreases as more dust species are considered. With a narrow range of dust sizes (e.g. Ts, max/Ts, min = 5), on the other hand, the growth rate in most of the ε–Ts, max space is converged with increasing dust species, but the fast and the slow growth regimes remain clearly separated. Moreover, it is not necessary that the largest dust species dominate the growth of the unstable modes, and the smaller dust species can affect the growth rate in a complicated way. In any case, we find that the fast-growth regime is bounded by ε ≳ 1 or Ts, max ≳ 1, which may represent the favourable conditions for planetesimal formation.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1753168
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10273107
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Volume:
- 501
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0035-8711
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 467 to 482
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa3628
