On the Gravitational Collapse of Small Dust Grains in Self-gravitating Disk Structures

Abstract Planet formation may begin much earlier than previously expected, when the protoplanetary disk is still massive and gravitationally unstable. It has been proposed that solid grains can concentrate in the spiral arms of self-gravitating disks, leading to the formation of planetary embryos or cores that can greatly accelerate the process of planet formation. We perform hydrodynamic simulations of self-gravitating gas and even smaller dust grains than previously investigated in three-dimensional shearing box simulations to explore the conditions necessary to form these planetary seeds. Focusing on small grains of dimensionless stopping time St = 0.01 and shorter, we find that disk metallicities Z ≳ 0.02 can overcome the disruptive effects of dust diffusion among these small dust grains. In the outer reaches of a gravitationally unstable disk, these models correspond to grains of approximately 1 mm and lead to planetary embryos between 0.1 and 1 Earth mass. The formation of these planetary embryos could therefore reduce the time needed for planet assembly, particularly in the outer regions of the disk where coagulation timescales are longer and solid growth is limited.