Objective
Strong evidence, regarding the properties and environment of chondrules and calcium-aluminium rich inclusions (CAIs) in the meteoritic record suggests that a local, transient heating mechanism is required to produce a significant amount of the solid material found in the solar system. With the early solar nebula as a proxy for early solar systems in general, this heating process must then be a significant component to understanding the evolution of dust in protoplanetary disks in general. I propose to develop the theory of the short-circuit instability recently proposed by myself and my collaborators. This instability acts in thermally ionised plasmas such as significant parts of the midplane of a protoplanetary disk, and satisfies a range of established constraints on the formation of chondrules and Type B CAIs. We have already established that it attains the necessary temperatures, but to establish the correct parameter regimes for the onset of the instability, and the timescales of the heating and cooling requires significant computational modelling, which is the subject of this proposal.
Call for proposal
FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IIF
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Funding Scheme
MC-IIF - International Incoming Fellowships (IIF)Coordinator
1165 Kobenhavn
Denmark