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Anders Johansen. Profile picture.

Anders Johansen

Professor

Anders Johansen. Profile picture.

Initial mass function of planetesimals formed by the streaming instability

Author

  • Urs Schäfer
  • Chao Chin Yang
  • Anders Johansen

Summary, in English

The streaming instability is a mechanism to concentrate solid particles into overdense filaments that undergo gravitational collapse and form planetesimals. However, it remains unclear how the initial mass function of these planetesimals depends on the box dimensions of numerical simulations. To resolve this, we perform simulations of planetesimal formation with the largest box dimensions to date, allowing planetesimals to form simultaneously in multiple filaments that can only emerge within such large simulation boxes. In our simulations, planetesimals with sizes between 80 km and several hundred kilometers form. We find that a power law with a rather shallow exponential cutoff at the high-mass end represents the cumulative birth mass function better than an integrated power law. The steepness of the exponential cutoff is largely independent of box dimensions and resolution, while the exponent of the power law is not constrained at the resolutions we employ. Moreover, we find that the characteristic mass scale of the exponential cutoff correlates with the mass budget in each filament. Together with previous studies of high-resolution simulations with small box domains, our results therefore imply that the cumulative birth mass function of planetesimals is consistent with an exponentially tapered power law with a power-law exponent of approximately -1.6 and a steepness of the exponential cutoff in the range of 0.3-0.4.

Department/s

  • Lund Observatory - Has been reorganised
  • eSSENCE: The e-Science Collaboration

Publishing year

2017-01-01

Language

English

Publication/Series

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Volume

597

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

EDP Sciences

Topic

  • Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology

Keywords

  • Hydrodynamics
  • Instabilities
  • Methods: Numerical
  • Planets and satellites: Formation
  • Protoplanetary disks

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0004-6361