PODCAST is funded by an ERC Consolidator Grant and led by Guillaume Laibe. The aim of the project is to tackle one of the most fascinating and challenging question of Modern Astrophysics is: How do planets form? Indeed, micronic dust grains must grow over 30 orders of magnitude in mass to build planet cores.
Global numerical simulations of dust grains that couple the dynamics of the particles to their growth/fragmentation and the radiation in the disc are compulsory to understand this process. Yet, this coupling has never been realised, given tremendous difficulties that originate from fundamental physical properties of dusty flows. The evolution of the dust distribution in protoplanetary discs remains therefore very poorly understood.
Our novel groundbreaking code is the first to handle non-ideal MHD, radiation and dust with dynamical growth and fragmentation. We can therefore overcome all past difficulties to model gas-grains mixtures in discs consistently. PODCAST is designed to study the different stages of gas and dust evolution in the various regions of the disc, with the main objective of combining these steps in a holistic model for planet formation. We will confront the results directly with observations, unleashing the full potential of the grand instruments ALMA, SPHERE, JWST and SKA.
ARThUs (Advances in the Research on Theories of the dark Universe) is funded by an ERC Advanced Grant and led by Thomas Buchert. The project focuses on two main fronts:
studies of the effect of inhomogeneities in relativistic cosmology on average properties of cosmological models. We ask the question whether these inhomogeneity effects, being quantitatively important, could even resolve the Dark Energy and Dark Matter problems of the standard model of cosmology.
robust morphological analysis of galaxy catalogues and Cosmic Microwave Background data using integral-geometrical tools (Minkowski Functionals), and topological tools (Homology).
DISKBUILD is funded by an ANR and led by Benoît Commerçon in CRAL. The PI of the project is Sébastien Charnoz at IPGP in Paris.
The aim os DISKBUILD is to characterize planet formation in accreting star-disk systems. Planets form in a protoplanetary disks (PPD) around a protostar. There are growing evidences from meteoritic records inside the Solar System, and observational evidence from ALMA observations that planet accretion processes started during the cloud infall during 100Kyrs to, possibly a few Myr. However most planet formation studies assume accretion in an isolated disk. Meteoritic records of Solar System material find growing evidence for injection of interstellar material in the Solar Nebula, as well as separations of isotopic anomalies reservoir that cannot be explained with the classical paradigm of an isolated disk. Our aim is to investigate the material inflow onto an assembling PPD and how this modifies the dust transport, planetesimal formation and planet migration using a combination of state-of-the-art 3D MHD multi-scale models, 1D dust growth, planetesimals formation and transport models and models of planet migration. The DISKBUILD project gathers 3 teams from different communities (star formation, planet formation, cosmochemistry) to investigate s (1) the structure of the gas/dust flux on the newly formed disk (2) its thermal structure (3) the injection and diffusion of dust in the disk (4) how dust and gas is transported and when and where planetesimals form and (5) how planets migrate in a non isolated disk. This will provide a new framework for planet formation and our results will be confronted to meteoritic records in priority and also to observations of young disk in planet forming regions. It will bridge the gap between planets and the interstellar medium to offer new perspective to interpret meteoritic data and to understand how the first solids of the Solar System form.
DUSTBUSTERS is funded by an ERC RISE project and led by Guillaume Laibe in CRAL. DUSTBUSTERS fosters interactions of researchers in CRAL with institutes spread all over the world.
studies of the effect of inhomogeneities in relativistic cosmology on average properties of cosmological models. We ask the question whether these inhomogeneity effects, being quantitatively important, could even resolve the Dark Energy and Dark Matter problems of the standard model of cosmology.