Disentangling effective cooling-time versus cooling-physics dependencies

Determine, by a systematic comparison of constant-β cooling and full radiative-cooling simulations of gravitational instability in protostellar disks, which quantitative outcomes depend solely on the effective cooling time β and which depend on the detailed cooling physics (e.g., optically thin versus optically thick radiative transport).

Background

Many previous simulations of gravitational instability in disks adopt a prescribed constant cooling time (constant β) for simplicity, while real disks cool radiatively with behavior differing in optically thin and optically thick regimes. Without a controlled, side-by-side comparison, it is difficult to know whether reported findings are governed by the overall cooling rate or by the specific cooling mechanism.

This paper highlights the need for a systematic comparison to clarify which results stem from the effective β alone and which intrinsically require the physics of radiative transport.