Global Models for the Evolution of Embedded, Accreting Protostellar Disks

Understand

Most analytic work to date on protostellar disks has focused on those in isolation from their environments.

• However, observations are now beginning to probe the earliest, most embedded phases of star formation, during which disks are rapidly accreting from their parent cores and cannot be modeled in isolation.
• We present a simple, one-zone model of protostellar accretion disks with high mass infall rates.
• Our model combines a self-consistent calculation of disk temperatures with an approximate treatment of angular momentum transport via two mechanisms.