Title: Gaps, Vortices, and Spiral Shocks: The Gas Dynamics of Protoplanetary Disks 

Speaker: James Stone (Princeton University) 

Time: 3 PM, March 02 (Thursday)   

Location: Lecture Hall, 3rd floor   

Abstract: 

Images of protoplanetary disks at optical and millimeter wavelengths reveal a variety of structures including gaps, spiral arms, and asymmetric blobs.  We present results from a variety of studies designed to investigate physical processes that can produce such features, such as density waves lauched by planet-disk interaction, and the formation of vortices due to Rossby-wave instabilities. Two key features of these studies are (1) the proper treatment of gas dynamics using non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics as opposed to the assumption of viscous hydrodynamics, and (2) the self-consistent modeling of dust grains coupled aerodynamically to the gas.  Synthetic images of the dynamical models are in remarkable agreement with the observations.