Formation of giant gas planets

This work is a collaboration between me, my supervisor Dr. Prasenjit Saha, Prof. Lucio Mayer and Tristen Hayfield (Phd student). In the contest of the gravitational instability model for planetary formation, we study how the dissociation of hydrogen affects the formation of gas giant planets; in fact this phenomen is supposed to make the collapsing phase quicker, creating compact objects able to survive an eventual migration phase which leads the protoplanet from the outer part of the disk (where it forms, according to the current model) to the inner part (where observational data detect them). In order to do that we are developing a new and more precise equation of state and we are implementing it inside the Gasoline code.

Darwinian lagrangian and MRI

Dr. Jonathan Coles and I are studing the proprietis of the Darwinian Lagrangian, which represents the interactions between charged particles up to the (v/c)^2 order. The aim of this project is to be able to better understand the MRI (Magnetic Rotationally Instabilities) that set up in the outer part of the protoplanetesimal discs, whose effects are not clear at all today. In order to do that, we are both using theoretical arguments and numerical ones, writing a new N-body code.

Grain Grow at 100 au

I am studying the 1 mm problem at 100 au in collaboration with Prof. P. Garaud, Dr. F. Meru and Dr. C. Oclatz. We are developing GroG, a new coagulation-fragmentation solver to study the evolution of grains in the outer part of a circumstellar dics. In our implementation, we take into account new physical effects that can help forming grains up to mm size, as shown byobservational data.