Title:

The Distribution of Water in Protoplanetary Disks


Fred Ciesla 
NASA Ames 




Abstract:

The distribution of water in the solar nebula is important to
understand for a number of reasons.  In the inner nebula, the
concentration of water vapor would determine what chemical reactions
may have taken place there.  In the outer nebula, water ice made up
roughly 50% of the solid material, and its distribution may have
played a role in determining where giant planets formed.  I have
developed a model which tracks the evolution of water in a viscous
protoplanetary disk as vapor and solids are created and destroyed
due to collisions, accretion, condensation, and vaporization. The
transport of water-bearing species due to diffusion and gas
drag induced migration are tracked to understand how the distribution
of water changes in an evolving protoplanetary disk.  I will discuss
the implications of this work on the chemistry of primitive meteorites,
formation of giant planets, and observations of protoplanetary disks.