Azimuthal and Vertical Streaming Instability at High Dust-to-gas Ratios and on the Scales of Planetesimal Formation

Abstract

The collapse of dust particle clouds directly to km-sized planetesimals is a promising way to explain the formation of planetesimals, asteroids and comets. In the past, this collapse has been studied in stratified shearing box simulations with super-solar dust-to-gas ratio ε, allowing for streaming instability (SI) and gravitational collapse. This paper studies the non-stratified SI under dust-to-gas ratios from ε=0.1 up to ε=1000 without self-gravity. The study covers domain sizes of L=0.1 H, 0.01 H and 0.001 H, in terms of gas disk scale height H, using the PencilCode. They are performed in radial-azimuthal (2-d) and radial-vertical (2.5-d) extent. The used particles of St=0.01 and 0.1 mark the upper end of the expected dust growth. SI-activity is found up to very high dust-to-gas ratios, providing fluctuations in the local dust-to-gas ratios and turbulent particle diffusion δ. We find an SI-like instability that operates in r-φeven when vertical modes are suppressed. This new azimuthal streaming instability (aSI) shows similar properties and appearance as the SI. Both, SI and aSI, show diffusivity at ε=100 only to be two orders of magnitude lower than at ε=1, suggesting a δ~ ε^{-1} relation that is shallow around ε= 1. The (a)SI ability to concentrate particles is found to be uncorrelated with its strength in particle turbulence. Finally, we performed a resolution study to test our findings of the aSI. This paper stresses out the importance of properly resolving the (a)SI at high dust-to-gas ratios and planetesimal collapse simulations, leading else wise to potentially incomplete results.