Initial
Conditions of the Birthplaces of Planets
For understanding how planets and planetary systems form it is essential to
have knowledge of the formation, structure and evolution of the planetary
birthplaces themselves: the protostellar/protoplanetary disks surrounding
newly formed stars. Several theoretical studies have found that even in their
later stages, the properties of these disks still have a 'memory' of the star+disk
formation process that happened a few million years earlier. The evolution
of protoplanetary disks can therefore not be considered independently of the star
formation process that preceded it. This is a complex problem, because the
initial conditions for the formation of individual stars are closely linked to
the dynamical environment of the nascent star cluster. Indeed, most stars
form in a clustered environment, where mutual interactions may drastically
alter the evolutionary properties of protostellar disks and their ability to
give birth to planets and planetary systems. It is the goal of this project
to theoretically investigate the connection between (a) the star formation
process in a turbulent molecular cloud environment, (b) the formation and
early evolution of a protostellar/protoplanetary disk, and (c) the early
planet formation processes studied in this Forschergruppe. We intend to do
this by performing high-precision two-dimensional (2D) radiation
hydrodynamics simulations of the collapse of rotating protostellar cores
to follow the build-up and early evolution of protostellar and
protoplanetary accretion disks. We will use data from three-dimensional (3D)
simulations of molecular cloud fragmentation and prestellar core formation
to provide realistic initial conditions for these simulations. Our
2D scheme is very fast and we can scan a wide range of
parameters. This will permit us to understand the effect of environment on
disk evolution and planet formation and to address questions such as what
are the initial conditions for planet formation, or how the planet
formation process depends on environment of the nascent star, and so forth. This
project will help projects from the C and D catagories define their disk
structures.
Principle Investigators
Prof. Dr. Ralf Klessen
Dr. Cornelis Dullemond
Dr. Simon Glover
