Instabilities and turbulence of dust sub]disks in protoplanetary nebulae (A07)

• Subject Area: Astrophysics and Astronomy
• Term: from 2012 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 187005812

Project addresses the long-standing problem how planetesimals, the 1- 1000 km-sized precursors of the planets, form from micrometer-sized dust in an overall gas-dominated protoplanetary disk. Of utmost importance in answering this question is the understanding of the interactions between the gaseous and the dusty components of the disk and the mutual interaction between the dust particles, particularly when the dust aggregates possess mm-dm sizes, for which sedimentation towards the mid-plane of the disk and other concentration processes can lead to various hydrodynamic instabilities. The goal of project is to understand the occurrence, importance and limits of these instabilities for the formation of planetes-imals.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 963: Astrophysical Flow Instabilities and Turbulence
• Major Instrumentation: 2 Hochgeschwindigkeitskameras
• Instrumentation Group: 5430 Hochgeschwindigkeits-Kameras (ab 100 Bilder/Sek)
• Applicant Institution: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
• Co-Applicant Institution: Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR); Institut für Aeordynamik und Strömungstechnik (IAS); Max-Planck-Institut für Dynamik und Selbstorganisation (MPIDS); Technische Universität Braunschweig
• Project Heads: Professor Dr. Jürgen Blum; Professor Dr. Eberhard Bodenschatz; Professor Dr.-Ing. Claus Wagner; Professor Dr. Haitao Xu