Thresholds for Particle Clumping by the Streaming Instability

Abstract: The streaming instability (SI) is a mechanism to aerodynamically concentrate solids in protoplanetary disks and trigger the formation of planetesimals. The SI produces strong particle clumping if the ratio of solid to gas surface density -- an effective metallicity -- exceeds a critical value. This critical value depends on particle sizes and disk conditions such as radial drift-inducing pressure gradients and levels of turbulence. To quantify these thresholds, we perform a suite of vertically-stratified SI simulations over a range of dust sizes and metallicities. We find a critical metallicity as low as 0.4% for the optimum particle sizes and standard radial pressure gradients (normalized value of $\Pi = 0.05$). This sub-Solar metallicity is lower than previous results due to improved numerical methods and computational effort. We discover a sharp increase in the critical metallicity for small solids, when the dimensionless stopping time (Stokes number) is $\leq 0.01$. We provide simple fits to the size-dependent SI clumping threshold, including generalizations to different disk models and levels of turbulence. We also find that linear, unstratified SI growth rates are a surprisingly poor predictor of particle clumping in non-linear, stratified simulations, especially when the finite resolution of simulations is considered. Our results widen the parameter space for the SI to trigger planetesimal formation.