Fulvia Pucci, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

"Protoplanetary Accretion Disks: Global Resistive MHD Simulations to Study the Role of Chemistry in Wind Launching and PLanet Detection"

Abstract: The dynamical evolution of protoplanetary disks (PPDs) is of key interest for building a comprehensive theory of planet formation and to explain the observational properties of these objects. In this talk, I will introduce the problem of disk accretion and the relative phenomenology and observations. Then I will present my preliminary work using the code A++. We perform global simulations of a vertically stratified disk threaded by a vertical magnetic field, where Ohmic and Ambipolar diffusion are included. We first study the evolution of the disk with an analytical profile of the non ideal coefficients, including the high latitude, low density region of the disk atmosphere, and we retrive a stationary super-keplerian wind solution as previously found in the literature. We then introduce a chemistry network at the equilibrium so that the thermodynamics and the element abundances determine the value of the Ohmic and Ambipolar diffusion. The chemistry network significantly affects the values of the non-ideal coefficients, determining whether a stationary wind solution can be found. This process is particularly important as it gives us information on the area/mass ratio of the grains that form at the disk midplane, which are the fundamental bricks for planet formation.