Dust Dynamics in Protoplanetary Disk Winds Driven by Magneto-Rotational Turbulence: A Mechanism for Floating Dust Grains with Characteristic Size (original) (raw)

We investigate the dynamics of dust grains with various sizes in protoplanetary disk winds driven by magnetorotational turbulence, by simulating the time evolution of the dust grain distribution in the vertical direction. Small dust grains, which are well coupled to the gas, are dragged upward with the up-flowing gas, while large grains remain near the midplane of a disk. Intermediate-size grains float near the sonic point of the disk wind located at several scale heights from the midplane, where the grains are loosely coupled to the background gas. For the minimum mass solar nebula at 1 AU, dust grains with size of 25 -45 µm float around 4 scale heights from the midplane. Considering the dependence on the distance from the central star, smaller-size grains remain only in an outer region of the disk, while larger-size grains are distributed in a broader region. We also discuss the implication of our result to the observation of dusty material around young stellar objects.