Planetesimals may form from the gravitational collapse of dense particle clumps initiated by the streaming instability. We use simulations of aerodynamically coupled gas-particle mixtures to investigate whether the properties of planetesimals formed in this way depend upon the sizes of the particles that participate in the instability. Based on three high-resolution simulations that span a range of dimensionless stopping times 6 X 10(-3) <= tau <= 2, no statistically significant differences in the initial planetesimal mass function are found. The mass functions are fit by a power law, dN/dM(p) proportional to M-p(-p), with p = 1.5-1.7 and errors of Delta p approximate to 0.1. Comparing the particle density fields prior to collapse, we find that the high-wavenumber power spectra are similarly indistinguishable, though the large-scale geometry of structures induced via the streaming instability is significantly different between all three cases. We interpret the results as evidence for a near-universal slope to the mass function, arising from the small-scale structure of streaming-induced turbulence.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/626045 |
| Date | 22 September 2017 |
| Creators | Simon, Jacob B., Armitage, Philip J., Youdin, Andrew N., Li, Rixin |
| Contributors | Univ Arizona, Dept Astron, Univ Arizona, Steward Observ |
| Publisher | IOP PUBLISHING LTD |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article |
| Rights | © 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. |
| Relation | http://stacks.iop.org/2041-8205/847/i=2/a=L12?key=crossref.254170f283d7e9e80660238a10223672 |
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