Gravoturbulent formation of planetesimals

We explore the effect of magnetorotational turbulence on the dynamics and concentrations of boulders in local box simulations of a sub-Keplerian protoplanetary disk. The solids are treated as particles, each with an independent space coordinate and velocity. We find that the turbulence has two effects on the solids. (1) Meter and decameter bodies are strongly concentrated, locally up to a factor of 100 times the average dust density, whereas decimeter bodies only experience a moderate density increase. The concentrations are located in large-scale radial gas density enhancements that arise from a combination of turbulence and shear. (2) For meter-sized boulders, the concentrations cause the average radial drift speed to be reduced by 40%. We find that the densest clumps of solids are gravitationally unstable under physically reasonable values for the gas column density and for the dust-to-gas ratio due to sedimentation. We speculate that planetesimals can form in a dust layer that is not in itself dense enough to undergo gravitational fragmentation, and that fragmentation happens in turbulent density fluctuations in this sublayer.