Abstract

Planetesimals may well form from the gravitational collapse of a particle cloud, the so called, pre-planetesimals, once they got concentrated by turbulent flow features, possibly enhanced by a streaming instability. This talk shall give an overview of the state of the field and summarize what we know and what we still have to learn about this mechanism.

I will discuss the formation and redistribution of the pre-planetesimals. I will also address the role of resolution in our numerical simulations and in how far this relates to the possible initial planetesimal masses. I show that the mass of the planetesimals is actually determined by the rate at which pre-planetesimals drift through the disk.

The talk shall further discuss a list of open questions concerning gravoturbulent planetesimal formation and how this model may fit to the observational findings of our solar system.