DDA2001, April2001
Session 10. Building Things
Wednesday, 8:00-9:50am

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[10.03] The Tilt Stability of a Planet-Disk System

S. Lubow (STScI), G. Ogilvie (IoA)

We consider the stability of a coplanar planet-disk system to small tilt perturbations of its components. The system contains a Jupiter mass planet that opens a gap in a surrounding gaseous disk. Two main effects on the tilt are considered: secular interactions, that act to damp the tilt, and mean-motion resonances, that act to excite tilt. Secular interactions are characterized by a low frequency nodal precession of the system. Formally, the disk contains secular resonances. However, the disk responds in a global manner that cannot be described by standard disk resonance theory. We carry out a linear normal modes analysis of the planet-disk system that is valid for small planet-disk relative tilts. The analysis includes the effects of gas pressure, self-gravity, and turbulent viscosity. All nontrivial modes damp for sufficiently high turbulent disk parameter alpha. We determine a stability criterion and the damping timescale.


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