A7 Instabilities and turbulence of dust sub-disks in protoplanetary nebulae

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Blum, Prof. Dr. Eberhard Bodenschatz, Prof. Dr. Claus Wagner, Dr. Haitao Xu

When dust agglomerates in protoplanetary disks have grown to sizes of millimeters to centimeters, their sedimentation towards the mid-plane of the nebula forms a dust-dominated sub-disk. Differential motion between this dusty sub-disk and the gas-dominated main disk leads to flow instabilities with possible considerable local dust concentrations. We will investigate, through a combination of laboratory experiments and numerical simulations, these instabilities and derive the fate of the dusty component in protoplanetary disks. This will enable us to predict whether the formation of planetesimals is feasible that way and what their expected sizes are.