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Planets are born in protostellar disks, which are now observed with enough resolution to address questions about internal gas flows. Magnetic forces are possibly drivers of the flows, but ionization state estimates suggest that much of the gas mass decouples from magnetic fields. Thus, hydrodynamical instabilities could play a major role. We investigate disk dynamics under conditions typical for a T Tauri system, using global 3D radiation-hydrodynamics simulations with embedded particles and a resolution of 70 cells per scale height. Stellar irradiation heating is included with realistic dust opacities. The disk starts in joint radiative balance and hydrostatic equilibrium. The vertical shear instability (VSI) develops into turbulence that persists up to at least 1600 inner orbits (143 outer orbits). Turbulent speeds are a few percent of the local sound speed at the midplane, increasing to 20%, or 100 m s−1, in the corona. These are consistent with recent upper limits on turbulent speeds from optically thin and thick molecular line observations of TW Hya and HD 163296. The predominantly vertical motions induced by the VSI efficiently lift particles upward. Grains 0.1 and 1 mm in size achieve scale heights greater than expected in isotropic turbulence. We conclude that while kinematic constraints from molecular line emission do not directly discriminate between magnetic and nonmagnetic disk models, the small dust scale heights measured in HL Tau and HD 163296 favor turbulent magnetic models, which reach lower ratios of the vertical kinetic energy density to the accretion stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have recently shown that spiral density waves propagating in accretion disks can undergo a parametric instability by resonantly coupling with and transferring energy into pairs of inertial waves (or inertial-gravity waves when buoyancy is important). In this paper, we perform inviscid three-dimensional global hydrodynamic simulations to examine the growth and consequence of this instability operating on the spiral waves driven by a Jupiter-mass planet in a protoplanetary disk. We find that the spiral waves are destabilized via the spiral wave instability (SWI), generating hydrodynamic turbulence and sustained radially alternating vertical flows that appear to be associated with long wavelength inertial modes. In the interval , where Rp denotes the semimajor axis of the planetary orbit (assumed to be 5 au), the estimated vertical diffusion rate associated with the turbulence is characterized by . For the disk model considered here, the diffusion rate is such that particles with sizes up to several centimeters are vertically mixed within the first pressure scale height. This suggests that the instability of spiral waves launched by a giant planet can significantly disperse solid particles and trace chemical species from the midplane. In planet formation models where the continuous local production of chondrules/pebbles occurs over Myr timescales to provide a feedstock for pebble accretion onto these bodies, this stirring of solid particles may add a time constraint: planetary embryos and large asteroids have to form before a gas giant forms in the outer disk, otherwise the SWI will significantly decrease the chondrule/pebble accretion efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present results from a suite of three-dimensional global hydrodynamic simulations that shows that spiral density waves propagating in circumstellar disks are unstable to the growth of a parametric instability that leads to break down of the flow into turbulence. This spiral wave instability (SWI) arises from a resonant interaction between pairs of inertial waves, or inertial-gravity waves, and the background spiral wave. The development of the instability in the linear regime involves the growth of a broad spectrum of inertial modes, with growth rates on the order of the orbital time, and results in a nonlinear saturated state in which turbulent velocity perturbations are of a similar magnitude to those induced by the spiral wave. The turbulence induces angular momentum transport and vertical mixing at a rate that depends locally on the amplitude of the spiral wave (we obtain a stress parameter α ∼ 5 × 10−4 in our reference model). The instability is found to operate in a wide range of disk models, including those with isothermal or adiabatic equations of state, and in viscous disks where the dimensionless kinematic viscosity ν ≤ 10−5. This robustness suggests that the instability will have applications to a broad range of astrophysical disk-related phenomena, including those in close binary systems, planets embedded in protoplanetary disks (including Jupiter in our own solar system) and FU Orionis outburst models. Further work is required to determine the nature of the instability and to evaluate its observational consequences in physically more complete disk models than we have considered in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protoplanetary disks (PPDs) are believed to accrete onto their central T Tauri star because of magnetic stresses. Recently published shearing box simulations indicate that Ohmic resistivity, ambipolar diffusion (AD) and the Hall effect all play important roles in disk evolution. In the presence of a vertical magnetic field, the disk remains laminar between 1–, and a magnetocentrifugal disk wind forms that provides an important mechanism for removing angular momentum. Questions remain, however, about the establishment of a true physical wind solution in the shearing box simulations because of the symmetries inherent in the local approximation. We present global MHD simulations of PPDs that include Ohmic resistivity and AD, where the time-dependent gas-phase electron and ion fractions are computed under FUV and X-ray ionization with a simplified recombination chemistry. Our results show that the disk remains laminar, and that a physical wind solution arises naturally in global disk models. The wind is sufficiently efficient to explain the observed accretion rates. Furthermore, the ionization fraction at intermediate disk heights is large enough for magneto-rotational channel modes to grow and subsequently develop into belts of horizontal field. Depending on the ionization fraction, these can remain quasi-global, or break-up into discrete islands of coherent field polarity. The disk models we present here show a dramatic departure from our earlier models including Ohmic resistivity only. It will be important to examine how the Hall effect modifies the evolution, and to explore the influence this has on the observational appearance of such systems, and on planet formation and migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]