A Tale of Two Grains: impact of grain size on ring formation via nonideal MHD processes (2002.01583v1)

Abstract: Substructures in PPDs, whose ubiquity was unveiled by recent ALMA observations, are widely discussed regarding their possible origins. We carry out global full magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations in axisymmetry, coupled with self-consistent ray-tracing radiative transfer, thermochemistry, and non-ideal MHD diffusivities. The abundance profiles of grains are also calculated based on the global dust evolution calculation, including sintering effects. We found that dust size plays a crucial role in the ring formation around the snow lines of protoplanetary disks (PPDs) through the accretion process. Disk ionization structures and thus tensorial conductivities depend on the size of grains.When grains are significantly larger than PAHs, the non-ideal MHD conductivities change dramatically across each snow line of major volatiles, leading to a sudden change of the accretion process across the snow lines and the subsequent formation of gaseous rings/gaps there. On the other hand,the variations of conductivities are a lot less with only PAH sized grains in disks and then these disks retain smoother radial density profiles across snow lines.