Původ prachových prstenců v protoplanetárním disku HD 144432
| Thesis title in Czech: | Původ prachových prstenců v protoplanetárním disku HD 144432 |
|---|---|
| Thesis title in English: | Origin of dust rings in the protoplanetary disk HD 144432 |
| Academic year of topic announcement: | 2025/2026 |
| Thesis type: | diploma thesis |
| Thesis language: | |
| Department: | Astronomical Institute of Charles University (32-AUUK) |
| Supervisor: | RNDr. Ondřej Chrenko, Ph.D. |
| Author: |
| Guidelines |
| In recent years, ALMA observations have brought evidence that many protoplanetary disks contain dusty rings and gaps in their outer regions (>20 au). These sub-structures are often hypothesized as indirect evidence of embedded protoplanets that could carve gaps due to gravitational planet-disk interactions and trap dust at the gap edges. However, little is known about dusty sub-structures in the inner disk (<20 au, where also the solar-system planets formed). Based on the VLTI observations sensitive to the inner disk emission, Varga et al. (2024) studied the protoplanetary disk HD 144432 and suggested that the interferometric data is compatible with the presence of three dust rings (~0.15, 1.3, and 4.1 au) separated by two gaps (~0.9 and 3 au).
The aim of this thesis is to study whether the observed dust distribution with three rings and two gaps could arise from perturbations driven by a single embedded unseen giant planet. Such scenario could indeed be possible if the disk has low turbulent viscosity, enabling the secondary (and even tertiary) spiral arms to shock the gas inwards from the planet location, deposit angular momentum, and open secondary gaps (Bae et al. 2017, 2018). The student will familiarize themselves with the hydrodynamic code Fargo3D (Benítez-Llambay & Masset 2016) and its multi-fluid version (Benítez-Llambay et al. 2019). The primary aim is then to construct a 2D model of HD 144432 with a putative giant planet. The disk gas and dust populations with various grain sizes will be modeled as individual fluids interacting through the aerodynamic drag. The student will test the robustness of the dust diffusion module in Fargo3D by adding the respective source term in the momentum equation (compare the formulation of Weber et al. 2019 to Huang & Bai 2022). The student will analyze the global distribution of the dust populations and its evolution in the presence of the planetary perturber. The simulation outcome will be compared against the observation-based dust profiles of Varga et al. (2024). Aside from the dust sizes, the turbulent gas viscosity and planet mass will serve as the main free parameters. This work has the potential to explain the dust sub-structures observed in HD 144432 through planet-disk interactions in a low-viscosity environment. A similar origin of dusty rings has also been suggested for the long-vanished protoplanetary disk of the Solar System (Lega et al. 2025). The proposed study could therefore provide an independent analogue of the same mechanism. The student will learn how to work in Linux, how to program in C and Python, and how to apply parallelization techniques such as OpenMP/MPI/CUDA. The student will learn how to access and utilize available high-performance computing centres such as the faculty cluster Chimera, MetaCentrum, or IT4Innovations. |
| References |
| Bae, J. et al. 2017, ApJ, 850, 201B
Bae, J. et al. 2018, ApJ, 864L, 26B Benítez-Llambay, P. & Masset, F. S. 2016, ApJS, 223, 11B Benítez-Llambay, P. et al. 2019, ApJS, 241, 25B Huang, P. & Bai, X.-N. 2022, ApJS, 262, 11H Lega, E. et al. 2025, arXiv:2508.02410 Varga, J. et al. 2024, A&A, 681A, 47V Weber, P. et al. 2019, ApJ, 884, 178W |