AlbaNova Colloquium

Zooming in on star and protoplanetary disk formation

by Åke Nordlund

Europe/Stockholm
Description
Adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) simulations with the RAMSES code allow us to zoom in to sub-AU scales from Giant Molecular Cloud (GMC) outer scales (~ 40pc). With grid sizes down to ~100 AU (16 levels of factor 2 refinement) we can follow supernova driving of star formation over Myr time scales. With 22 level of refinement we can follow the accretion history of individual stars over ~100 kyr with grid sizes down to ~2 AU, and with 29 levels of refinement we can study the dynamics of accretion disks with jets and disk winds over time scales ~100 yr, with grid sizes down to ~0.015 AU. We are currently implementing AMR radiative energy transfer and non-equilibrium chemistry with dust in the RAMSES code, and also developing a new moving-mesh AMR code (DISPATCH), intended for the near future era of exa-scale computing.