PF-02-0031

Importance of Dust Pressure in Debris and Protoplanetary Discs

Elliot Matthew Lynch

Dust pressure is a measure of the velocity/momentum dispersion in the dust at a given point in space, which is important for modelling the dust dynamics. This pressure is often ignored by dust fluid models, despite the fact that, excepting for well coupled dust in laminar flows, the dust pressure is not generally negligible. For poorly coupled dust the dust pressure related to the orbital element (i.e. inclination and free eccentricity) distribution of the particles, while for well coupled dust it will be excited by the gas turbulence. Being a statistical property of the dust distribution function, dust pressure arises even in completely collisionless systems where the dust bulk velocity (the velocity of the dust fluid) will be non-Keplerian even for particles on perfectly Keplerian orbits. In this poster I will discuss how the presence of dust pressure opens up a rich range of phenomena such as dust sound/seismic waves, which will have been missed by current pressureless dust models.