Research Scientist Tom Steiman-Cameron reports the publication of his latest paper on protoplanetary disks in the Astrophysical Journal. Its six authors span three generations of IU faculty and students. Tom himself, along with Aaron Boley and Scott Michael are former students of Dick Durisen, and two other authors, Karna Desai and Caitlin McConell are students of Tom’s. As a group, the authors represent 55 continuous years of active membership in the department.
The paper itself, “Mass and Angular Momentum Transport in a Gravitationally Unstable Protoplanetary Disk with Improved 3D Radiative Hydrodynamics,” presents a 3D grid-based radiative hydrodynamics study with varied resolutions of a 0.07 solar mass disk orbiting a 0.5 solar mass star as it settles over most of its radial extent. They examine the disk's stability criteria, thermodynamic properties, strengths of gravitational instabilities, characteristics of density waves and torques produced, radial mass transport arising from these torques, and the level to which transport can be represented as local or nonlocal processes.
The paper is available from the Astrophysical Journal at https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023ApJ...958..139S/abstract
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