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| Paper: |
Gravitational Instability in a Disk of Cometesimals |
| Volume: |
321, Extrasolar Planets: Today and Tomorrow |
| Page: |
282 |
| Authors: |
Tanga, P. |
| Abstract: |
Starting from the scenario independently described by Safronov (1969) and Goldreich and Ward (1973), the gravitational instability in the subdisk of planetesimals has been considered, for a long time, a possible mechanism for the growth of planetesimals. Later, it has been discarded due to the difficulty of maintaining a sufficiently dense layer in the nebula midplane, against the action of turbulence. However, the possible existence of self-gravitating clusters of planetesimals has been invoked in comet formation model (Weidenschilling 1997). Gravitational instability could also be a viable scenario in presence of highly inhomogeneous spatial distributions of planetesimals, presenting regions of strong density enhancement. Furthermore, its importance could be greater in the case of other planetary systems. This motivates a more detailed analysis of the dynamical evolution of gravitational instability, using modern numerical techniques. In this paper some preliminary results of N-body simulations are presented, and the role of a dissipating mechanism (gas drag) is discussed. |
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