Abstract: Planet-disc interactions build up local pressure maxima that may halt the radial drift of protoplanetary dust, and pile it up in rings and crescents. ALMA observations of the HD 135344B disc revealed two rings in the thermal continuum stemming from similar to mm-sized dust. At higher frequencies the inner ring is brighter relative to the outer ring, which is also shaped as a crescent rather than a full ring. In near-IR scattered light images, the disc is modulated by a two-armed grand-design spiral originating inside the ALMA inner ring. Such structures may be induced by a massive companion evacuating the central cavity, and by a giant planet in the gap separating both rings, that channels the accretion of small dust and gas through its filamentary wakes while stopping the larger dust from crossing the gap. Here we present ALMA observations in the J = (2 – 1) CO isotopologue lines and in the adjacent continuum, with up to 12 km baselines. Angular resolutions of similar to 0 ''.03 reveal the tentative detection of a filament connecting both rings, and which coincides with a local discontinuity in the pitch angle of the IR spiral, proposed previously as the location of the protoplanet driving this spiral. Line diagnostics suggests that turbulence, or superposed velocity components, is particularly strong in the spirals. The (CO)-C-12(2-1) 3D rotation curve points at stellocentric accretion at radii within the inner dust ring, with a radial velocity of up to similar to 5 per cent +/- 0.5 per cent Keplerian, which corresponds to an excessively large accretion rate of similar to 2 x 10(-6) M circle dot yr(-1) if all of the CO layer follows the (CO)-C-12(2-1) kinematics. This suggests that only the surface layers of the disc are undergoing accretion, and that the line broadening is due to superposed laminar flows.

Abstract: Disk solids are critical in many planet formation processes; however, their effect on planet migration remains largely unexplored. Here we assess this important issue for the first time by building on the systematic measurements of dust torques on an embedded planet by Benitez-Llambay & Pessah. Adopting standard models for the gaseous disk and its solid content, we quantify the impact of the dust torque for a wide range of conditions describing the disk/planet system. We show that the total torque can be positive and reverse inward planet migration for planetary cores with M (p) & LSIM; 10 M (& OPLUS;). We compute formation tracks for low-mass embryos for conditions usually invoked when modeling planet formation processes. Our most important conclusion is that dust torques can have a significant impact on the migration and formation history of planetary embryos. The most important implications of our findings are as follows. (i) For nominal dust-to-gas mass ratios & epsilon; & SIME; 0.01, low-mass planets migrate outwards beyond the water ice-line if most of the mass in the solids is in particles with Stokes numbers St & SIME;0.1. (ii) For & epsilon; & GSIM; 0.02-0.05, solids with small Stokes numbers, St & SIME; 0.01, can play a dominant role if most of the mass is in those particles. (iii) Dust torques have the potential to enable low-mass planetary cores formed in the inner disk to migrate outwards and act as the seed for massive planets at distances of tens of au.

Abstract: Episodic accretion is a low-mass pre-main sequence phenomenon characterized by sudden outbursts of enhanced accretion. These objects are classified into two: protostars with elevated levels of accretion that lasts for decades or more, called FUors, and protostars with shorter and repetitive bursts, called EXors. HBC 494 is a FUor object embedded in the Orion Molecular Cloud. Earlier Atacama Large (sub-)Millimeter Array (ALMA) continuum observations showed an asymmetry in the disc at 0.“2 resolution. Here, we present follow-up observations at similar to 0.”03, resolving the system into two components: HBC 494 N (primary) and HBC 494 S (secondary). No circumbinary disc was detected. Both discs are resolved with a projected separation of similar to 0."18 (75 au). Their projected dimensions are 84 +/- 1.8 x66.9 +/- 1.5 mas for HBC 494 N and 64.6 +/- 2.5 x46.0 +/- 1.9 mas for HBC 494 S. The discs are almost aligned and with similar inclinations. The observations show that the primary is similar to 5 times brighter/more massive and similar to 2 times bigger than the secondary. We notice that the northern component has a similar mass to the FUors, while the southern has to EXors. The HBC 494 discs show individual sizes that are smaller than single eruptive YSOs. In this work, we also report (CO)-C-12, (CO)-C-13, and (CO)-O-18 molecular line observations. At large scale, the (CO)-C-12 emission shows bipolar outflows, while the (CO)-C-13 and (CO)-O-18 maps show a rotating and infalling envelope around the system. At a smaller scale, the (CO)-C-12 and (CO)-C-13 moment zero maps show cavities within the continuum discs' area, which may indicate continuum over-subtraction or slow-moving jets and chemical destruction along the line of sight.

Abstract: We present a suite of high-resolution hydrodynamic simulations of binaries immersed in circumbinary accretion discs (CBDs). For the first time, we investigate the preferential accretion rate as a function of both eccentricity e(b) and mass ratio q(b) in a densely sampled parameter space, finding that when compared with circular binaries, (i) mass ratios grow more efficiently in binaries on moderately eccentric orbits (0.0 less than or similar to e(b) less than or similar to 0.4), and (ii) high eccentricities (e(b) greater than or similar to 0.6) suppress mass ratio growth. We suggest that this non-monotonic preferential accretion behaviour may produce an observable shift in the mass ratio distributions of stellar binaries and massive black hole binaries. We further find that the response of a CBD can be divided into three regimes, depending on eccentricity and mass ratio: (i) CBDs around circular binaries always precess freely, whereas CBDs around eccentric binaries either (ii) undergo forced precession or (iii) remain locked at an angle with respect to the binary periapsis. Forced precession in eccentric binaries is associated with strong modulation of individual accretion rates on the precession time-scale, a potentially observable signature in accreting binaries with short orbital periods. We provide CBD locking angles and precession rates as a function of e(b) and q(b) for our simulation suite.