Next Talk: May 15

Speaker:    Jeff Oishi   American museum of Natural History
Title: Turbulence and Reconnection in Protoplanetary Disks   

Abstract:   
In order to explain and understand the diversity of observed planetary systems, we must have a robust theory of planet formation. In order to have such a theory, we must understand the growth of interstellar dust grains from microns to kilometer-sized planetesimals within turbulent, accreting protoplanetary disks. I will discuss the aspects of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence most relevant to the growth of planetesimals. I will then present a suite of numerical experiments designed to connect the turbulence physics with protoplanetary disks. Finally, I will talk about future higher fidelity numerical simulations and some recent work on understanding magnetic reconnection in the accretion disk context.

Full Schedule: Spring 2013

Date Speaker Title
January 16 Fabian Schmidt
  Princeton		 Galaxy Clustering and the Peak-Background Split
January 23 Fatima Ebrahimi
  Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory		 Momentum transport and dynamo process in flowing plasmas
January 30 Diego Muñoz
  Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics		 The Moving-mesh Code Arepo: Applications to Circumstellar Discs
February 6 Konstantinos Tassis
  University of Crete 		Star Formation Through the Chemical Lens
February 13 Andrea Isella
  California Institute of Technology		 Probing planet formation through millimeter-wave observations
February 20 Min-Kai Lin
  Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics		 Large-scale vortex formation in protoplanetary disks
February 27 Kengo Tomida
  Princeton 		Radiation Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of Protostellar Core Formation
March 6 Ryan Hickox
  Dartmouth		 The beauty of simplicity: Understanding galaxy and black hole evolution
March 13 Elisa Chisari
  Princeton		 The tidal alignment model of Luminous Red Galaxies
March 20 Katherine Blundell
  Oxford University		 Modes of Mass-loss from Microquasars
March 27 Francesco Tombesi
  NASA Goddard		 The X-ray view of winds in Active Galactic Nuclei
April 3 Pascale Garaud
  UCSC		 Double-diffusive convection in Astrophysics
April 10 Bence Kocsis
  Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics 		Connecting stellar dynamics to condensed matter physics
April 17 Andrea Ferrara
  Scuola Normale Superiore		 Cosmic reionization and the first galaxies
April 24 Jeremy Darling
  University of Colorado		 Precision Astrophysics
May 1 James Owen
  Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics		 The dispersal of protoplanetary discs
May 8 Avery Broderick
  Perimeter Institute & University of Waterloo		 Black Hole Imaging Horizons
May 15 Andrew Howard
  University of Hawaii		 Patterns of Planet Occurrence from Doppler and Kepler
May 22 Jeff Oishi
  American Museum of Natural History		 Turbulence and Reconnection in Protoplanetary Disks
May 29 Abderahmen Zoghbi
  University of Maryland		 TBA