Three-dimensional radiative hydrodynamics for disk stability simulations: A proposed testing standard and new results

Recent three-dimensional radiative hydrodynamics simulations of protoplanetary disks report disparate disk behaviors, and these differences involve the importance of convection to disk cooling, the dependence of disk cooling on metallicity, and the stability of disks against fragmentation and clump formation. To guarantee trustworthy results, a radiative physics algorithm must demonstrate the capability to handle both the high and low optical depth regimes. We develop a test suite that can be used to demonstrate an algorithm's ability to relax to known analytic flux and temperature distributions, to follow a contracting slab, and to inhibit or permit convection appropriately. We then show that the radiative algorithm employed by Mejia and Boley et al. and the algorithm employed by Cai et al. pass these tests with reasonable accuracy. In addition, we discuss a new algorithm that couples flux-limited diffusion with vertical rays, we apply the test suite, and we discuss the results of evolving the Boley et al. disk with this new routine. Although the outcome is significantly different in detail with the new algorithm, we obtain the same qualitative answers. Our disk does not cool fast due to convection, and it is stable to fragmentation. We find an effective alpha approximate to 10(-2). In addition, transport is dominated by low-order modes.