Letter to the Editor

Reviving Dead Zones in accretion disks by Rossby vortices at their boundaries

¹ Department of Physics & Astronomy, Rochester University, Rochester NY 14627-0171, USA
² LAOG, Université J. Fourier, UMR , France e-mail: pvarni@pas.rochester.edu
³ Service d'Astrophysique (UMR Astroparticules et cosmologie) CEA/Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France e-mail: tagger@cea.fr

Received: 10 September 2005
Accepted: 13 December 2005

Abstract

Models of the accretion disks of Young Stellar Objects show that they should not be ionized at a few AU from the star, and thus not subject to the MHD turbulence believed to cause accretion. This has been suggested to create a “Dead Zone” where accretion remains unexplained. Here we show that the existence of the Dead Zone self-consistently creates a density profile favorable to the Rossby Wave Instability of Lovelace et al. (1999, ApJ, 513, 805). This instability will create and sustain Rossby vortices in the disk which could lead to enhanced planet formation.