Dynamical Studies of Astrophysical Disk

Our main research topic currently is

 

Young stars are initially surrounded by discs consisting of dust and gas. It is those discs that planetary systems can develop from if the conditions are favourable. Many young stars form not in isolation but as part of a cluster of stars. The properties of such clusters can vary considerably. Some clusters contain thousands of stars and are so dense that, as the stars move, the star-disc systems can interact with each other resulting in changes of the disc. Investigating how the cluster environment changes the disc properties is currently the central theme of our work.

 

In addition we investigate

 

The common denominator are N-body methods. We use hierarchical treecodes, SPH simulations and codes with higher order intergrators to study the dynamics of these objects.