EPoS Contribution
EPoS Contribution
The role of turbulence for dust growth in protostellar cores and disks

Liubin Pan
CfA, Cambridge, US
The evolution of dust grains is a crucial process to understand the collapse of protostellar cores and the formation and evolution of protoplanetary disks. However, the process of grain growth by coagulation is still very poorly understood. One of the main uncertainties is the role of turbulence in the generation of relative velocities among grains, leading to their collisions. In this work, we study the collision kernel and collision velocity of dust grains induced by turbulent motions, and we apply our results to protostellar cores and protoplanetary disks. Using numerical simulations, we evaluate the collision kernel as a function of the particle size, accounting for the effects of turbulent clustering and turbulence-induced collision speed. We introduce our theoretical model for the particle relative velocity, which agrees well with the simulation data. We compare our results with the commonly-used formulation for dust collisions. Implications of our results on dust growth in prestellar cores are discussed.
Collaborators:
P. Padoan, ICREA & ICC, Spain
Key publication

Suggested Sessions: Turbulence