Implications of the protostellar disk fragmentation Eduard Vorobyov The Institute of Astronomy, The University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Gravitational instability and fragmentation in the early evolution of embedded protostellar disks is a common occurrence, which leads to a zoo of various effects depending on the fate of the fragments. I will demonstrate how disk fragmentation can trigger episodic accretion onto the star, an effect that can explain a wide spread in luminosities in young stellar objects. Formation of gas giants and brown dwarfs on wide orbits and ejection of brown dwarfs and very-low-mass stars into the intracluster medium can also be triggered by disk fragmentation. Finally, I will show how disk fragmentation can explain the flattening of the mass accretion -- stellar mass relation in T Tauri stars and account for the presence of crystalline silicates in the Solar System comets.
Collaborators: Shantanu Basu, UWO, Canada Mike Dunham, Yale Univ., USA Isabelle Baraffe, Exeter Univ., UK Gilles Chabrier, Leon Univ., France	Key publication