Investigating the Structure of Vortices in Protoplanetary Disks using Radiative Transfer Modelling

Recent observations by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument have illustrated complex asymmetric substructures in protoplanetary disks, which are expected to be the significant concentration of dust mass trapped in vortices. The vortices, present in the scattered-light images of SPHERE, are absent in the shorter wavelength bands of ALMA, which partially defies expectations. Using LA-COMPASS, we performed three sets of multi-dimensional, hydrodynamical simulations of protoplanetary disks with vortices induced by the presence of a Jupiter-mass planet at 20 AU. Two sets of simulations are fully 3D and contain a single dust species of 1 micron and 2 cm, respectively; the final simulation is 2+1D and contains 121 coagulating dust species. This allows us to see what effect the coagulation of dust has on vortex structure. We use the Monte Carlo routine of RADMC3D to generate temperature profiles and brightness profiles of each of these simulated disks. After convolving with beams of appropriate sizes and orientations, we then compare the simulated brightness profiles with ALMA and SPHERE observations.