Streaming instability on different scales – I. Planetesimal mass distribution variability

ABSTRACT We present numerical simulations of dust clumping and planetesimal formation initiated by the streaming instability (SI) with self-gravity. We examine the variability in the planetesimal formation process by employing simulation domains with large radial and azimuthal extents and a novel approach of re-running otherwise identical simulations with different random initializations of the dust density field. We find that …