Long-term evolution of the temperature structure in magnetized protoplanetary disks and its implication for the dichotomy of planetary composition

¹ Institute for Advanced Study and Department of Astronomy, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
² Astronomical Institute, Tohoku University, 6-3 Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8578, Japan
³ Department of Physics, Kurume University, 67 Asahimachi, Kurume, Fukuoka 830-0011, Japan
⁴ Université Côte d’Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Laboratoire Lagrange, Bd de l’Observatoire, CS 34229, 06304 Nice cedex 4, France
⁵ Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 1 Lisuo Road, Shanghai 201210, China
⁶ School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China

^★ Corresponding author; mori.s@astr.tohoku.ac.jp

Received: 9 December 2024
Accepted: 8 April 2025

Abstract

Context. The thermal structure and evolution of protoplanetary disks play a crucial role in planet formation. In addition to stellar irradiation, accretion heating is also thought to significantly affect the disk thermal structure and planet formation processes.

Aims. We present the long-term evolution (from the beginning of Class II to disk dissipation) of thermal structures in laminar magnetized disks to investigate where and when accretion heating is a dominant heat source. In addition, we demonstrate that the difference in the disk structures affects the water content of forming planets.

Methods. We considered the mass loss by magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) and photoevaporative disk winds to investigate the influence of wind mass loss on the accretion rate profile. Our model includes the recent understanding of accretion heating, that is, accretion heating in laminar disks is less efficient than that in turbulent disks because the surface is heated at optically thinner altitudes and energy is removed by disk winds.

Results. We find that accretion heating is weaker than irradiation heating at about 1–10 au even in the early Class II disk, but it can affect the temperature in the inner 1 au region. We also find that the magnetohydrodynamic wind mass loss in the inner region can significantly reduce the accretion rate compared with the rate in the outer region, which in turn reduces accretion heating. Furthermore, using evolving disk structures, we demonstrate that when accretion heating models are updated, the evolution of protoplanets is affected. In particular, we find that our model produces a dichotomy of the planetary water fraction of 1–10 M_⊕.