Dhruv Muley   (USA)

muley @ mpia.de

Circumplanetary and protoplanetary disks

When molecular clouds collapse to form stellar systems, most of the mass is concentrated in the central protostar, but most of the angular momentum is deposited in a thin, extended protoplanetary disk (PPD). Over the several-Myr disk lifetime, various hydrodynamical, gravitational, chemical, and dust-dependent processes affect planet formation. We aim to investigate these problems with PLUTO—a hydrodynamical code designed to flexibly accommodate additional physics—with emphasis on the observational consequences of planet formation. We take a particular interest in circumplanetary disks (CPDs)—structures fed by PPD material, and potentially observed in systems such as PDS 70. Understanding the properties of CPDs would allow better constraints on observational detections, and help elucidate the formation process of giant planets.

Supervisor:    Hubert Klahr   (MPIA)