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In a standard theory of the formation of the planets in our Solar System, terrestrial planets and cores of gas giants are formed through accretion of kilometer-sized objects (planetesimals) in a protoplanetary disk. Gravitational $N$-body simulations of a disk system made up of numerous planetesimals are the most direct way to study the accretion process. However, the use of $N$-body simulations has been limited to idealized models (e.g. perfect accretion) and/or narrow spatial ranges in the radial direction, due to the limited number of simulation runs and particles available. We have developed new $N$-body simulation code equipped with a particle-particle particle-tree (${\rm P^3T}$) scheme for studying the planetary system formation process: GPLUM. For each particle, GPLUM uses the fourth-order Hermite scheme to calculate gravitational interactions with particles within cut-off radii and the Barnes-Hut tree scheme for particles outside the cut-off radii. In existing implementations, ${\rm P^3T}$ schemes use the same cut-off radius for all particles, making a simulation become slower when the mass range of the planetesimal population becomes wider. We have solved this problem by allowing each particle to have an appropriate cut-off radius depending on its mass, its distance from the central star, and the local velocity dispersion of planetesimals. In addition to achieving a significant speed-up, we have also improved the scalability of the code to reach a good strong-scaling performance up to 1024 cores in the case of $N=10^6$. GPLUM is freely available from https://github.com/YotaIshigaki/GPLUM with MIT license., Comment: 17 pages, 16 figures

Different ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) auroral features have been observed at Jupiter and Saturn. Using models related to UV and IR auroral emissions, we estimate the characteristic time scales for the emissions, and evaluate whether the observed differences between UV and IR emissions can be understood by the differences in the emission time scales. Based on the model results, the UV aurora at Jupiter and Saturn is directly related to excitation by auroral electrons that impact molecular H2, occurring over a time scale of 0.01 sec. The IR auroral emission involves several time scales: while the auroral ionization process and IR transitions occur over < 0.01 sec, the time scale for ion chemistry is much longer at 0.01-10000 sec. Associated atmospheric phenomena such as temperature variations and circulation are effective over time scales of > 10000 sec. That is, for events that have a time scale of ~100 sec, the ion chemistry, present in the IR but absent in the UV emission process, could play a key role in producing a different features at the two wavelengths. Applying these results to the observed Jovian polar UV intensification events and the Io footprint aurora indicates that whether the IR intensity varies in correlation with the UV or not depends on the number flux of electrons and their characteristic energy., Comment: 7 pages, 1 table, 8 figures. accepted for publication in Proceedings of the 12th International Symposium on Planetary Science

The surface of the Martian moon Phobos exhibits two distinct geologic units, known as the red and blue units. The provenance of these regions is uncertain yet crucial to understanding the origin of the Martian moon and its interaction with the space environment. Here we show that Phobos' orbital eccentricity can cause sufficient grain motion to refresh its surface, suggesting that space weathering is the likely driver of the dichotomy on the moon's surface. In particular, we predict that blue regions are made up of pristine endogenic material that can be uncovered in steep terrain subject to large variations in the tidal forcing from Mars. The predictions of our model are consistent with current spacecraft observations which show that blue units are found near these regions., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Nature Geoscience

We investigate the simultaneous evolution of dust and gas density profiles at a radial pressure bump located in a protoplanetary disk. If dust particles are treated as test particles, a radial pressure bump traps dust particles that drift radially inward. As the dust particles become more concentrated at the gas pressure bump, however, the drag force from dust to gas (back-reaction), which is ignored in a test-particle approach, deforms the pressure bump. We find that the pressure bump is completely deformed by the back-reaction when the dust-to-gas mass ratio reaches $\sim 1$ for a slower bump restoration. The direct gravitational instability of dust particles is inhibited by the bump destruction. In the dust-enriched region, the radial pressure support becomes $\sim 10-100$ times lower than the global value set initially. Although the pressure bump is a favorable place for streaming instability (SI), the flattened pressure gradient inhibits SI from forming large particle clumps corresponding to $100-1000$ km sized bodies, which has been previously proposed. If SI occurs there, the dust clumps formed would be $10-100$ times smaller, that is, of about $1 - 100$ km., Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics

We investigated whether outward Planetesimal Driven Migration (PDM) takes place or not in simulations when the self gravity of planetesimals is included. We performed $N$-body simulations of planetesimal disks with large width (0.7 - 4AU) which ranges over the ice line. The simulations consisted of two stages. The first stage simulations were carried out to see the runaway growth phase using the planetesimals of initially the same mass. The runaway growth took place both at the inner edge of the disk and at the region just outside the ice line. This result was utilized for the initial setup of the second stage simulations in which the runaway bodies just outside the ice line were replaced by the protoplanets with about the isolation mass. In the second stage simulations, the outward migration of the protoplanet was followed by the stopping of the migration due to the increase of the random velocity of the planetesimals. Due to this increase of random velocities, one of the PDM criteria derived in Minton and Levison (2014) was broken. In the current simulations, the effect of the gas disk is not considered. It is likely that the gas disk plays an important role in planetesimal driven migration, and we plan to study its effect in future papers., Comment: Accepted to ApJ

We have studied formation of planetesimals at a radial pressure bump in a protoplanetary disk created by radially inhomogeneous magnetorotational instability (MRI), through three-dimensional resistive MHD simulations including dust particles. In our previous papers, we showed that the inhomogeneous MRI developing in non-uniform structure of magnetic field or magnetic resistivity can transform the local gas flow in the disk to a quasi-steady state with local rigid rotation that is no more unstable against the MRI. Since the outer part of the rigid rotation is super-Keplerian flow, a quasi-static pressure bump is created and dust concentration is expected there. In this paper, we perform simulations of the same systems, adding dust particles that suffer gas drag and modulate gas flow via the back-reaction of the gas drag (dust drag). We use O(10^7) super-particles, each of which represents many dust particles with sizes of centimeter to meter. We have found that the dust drag suppresses turbulent motion to decrease the velocity dispersion of the dust particles while it broadens the dust concentrated regions to limit peaky dust concentration, compared with the simulation without the dust drag. We found that reduction in the velocity dispersion) is dominated over the suppression in particle concentration. For meter-size particles with the friction time ~1/Omega, where Omega is Keplerian frequency, the gravitational instability of the dust particles that may lead to planetesimal formation is expected. For such a situation, we further introduced the self-gravity of dust particles to the simulation to demonstrate that several gravitationally bound clumps are actually formed. Through analytical arguments, we found that the planetesimal formation from meter-sized dust particles can be possible at ~5AU, if dust spatial density is a few times larger than that in the minimum mass solar nebula., Comment: ApJ, accepted

In conventional superconductors, magnetic impurities form an impurity band due to quantum interference of the impurity bound states, leading to suppression of the superconducting transition temperature. Such quantum interference effects can also be expected in d-wave superconductors. Here, we use scanning tunneling microscopy to investigate the effect of multiple non-magnetic impurities on the local electronic structure of the high-temperature superconductor Bi$_{2}$Sr$_{2}$Ca(Cu$_{1-x}$Zn$_{x}$)$_{2}$O$_{8+\delta}$. We find several fingerprints of quantum interference of the impurity bound states including: (i) a two-dimensional modulation of local density-of-states with a period of approximately 5.4 \AA\ along the $a$- and $b$-axes, which is indicative of the d-wave superconducting nature of the cuprates; (ii) abrupt spatial variations of the impurity bound state energy; (iii)an appearance of positive energy states; (iv) a split of the impurity bound state. All of these findings provide important insight into how the impurity band in d-wave superconductors is formed., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, to be published in PRB

Using Scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS), we report the correlation between spatial gap inhomogeneity and the zinc (Zn) impurity resonance in single crystals of Bi$_{\mathrm{2}}$Sr$_{\mathrm{2}}$Ca(Cu$_{\mathrm{1-}x}$Zn$_{x}$)$_{\mathrm{2}}$O$_{\mathrm{8+}\delta}$ with different carrier (hole) concentrations ($p$) at a fixed Zn concentration ($x$ $\sim$ 0.5 % per Cu atom). In all the samples, the impurity resonance lies only in the region where the gap value is less than $\sim$ 60 meV. Also the number of Zn resonance sites drastically decreases with decreasing $p$, in spite of the fixed $x$. These experimental results lead us to a conclusion that the Zn impurity resonance does not appear in the large gap region although the Zn impurity evidently resides in this region., Comment: Phys. Rev. B Rapid Communication (Published) 4 pages, 3 figures

How to create planetesimals from tiny dust particles in a proto-planetary disk before the dust particles spiral to the central star is one of the most challenging problems in the theory of planetary system formation. In our previous paper Kato et al. (2009), we have shown that a steady angular velocity profile that consists of both super and sub-Keplerian regions is created in the disk through non-uniform excitation of Magneto-Rotational Instability (MRI). Such non-uniform MRI excitation is reasonably expected in a part of disks with relatively low ionization degree. In this paper, we show through three-dimensional resistive MHD simulations with test particles that this radial structure of the angular velocity indeed leads to prevention of spiral-in of dust particles and furthermore to their accumulation at the boundary of super-Keplerian and sub-Keplerian regions. Treating dust particles as test particles, their motions under the influence of the non-uniform MRI through gas drag are simulated. In the most favorable cases (meter-size dust particles in the disk region with a relatively large fraction of MRI-stable region), we found that the dust concentration is peaked around the super/sub-Keplerian flow boundary and the peak dust density is 10,000 times as high as the initial value. The peak density is high enough for the subsequent gravitational instability to set in, suggesting a possible route to planetesimal formation via non-uniformly excited MRI in weakly ionized regions of a disk., Comment: 40 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

Driven by the support and interest of the international space plasma community to examine simultaneous physical plasma scales and their interactions, the Cross-Scale Mission concept was submitted and accepted as an ESA Cosmic Vision M-class candidate mission. This report presents an overview of the assessment study phase of the 7 ESA spacecraft Cross-Scale mission. Where appropriate, discussion of the benefit of international collaboration with the SCOPE mission, as well as other interested parties, is included., Comment: Assessment Study Report as part of the ESA Cosmic Vision M-Class mission selection process