Members

Kundan Kadam

I am a theoretical/computational astrophysicist, and currently a Research Fellow in Ágnes Kóspál’s SACCRED  group at Konkoly Observatory in Budapest. My research work is concerned with predicting realistic initial conditions for the planet formation, especially with respect to the instabilities occurring in accretion disks around low-mass young stars. I investigate several aspects of this problem from a theoretical point of view, using hydrodynamic and radiative transfer simulations of protoplanetary disks.

Some of general phenomena I’m interested in are- protoplanetary disk formation and evolution, disk instabilities and outbursts, star and planet formation, accretion disks, etc.

I’m also interested in close binary interactions, mass transfer, contact binaries, common envelopes, etc.

email: kundan.kadam<at>csfk.mta.hu

Here’s a nice image from our simulations!

Gas surface density distribution of a protoplanetary disk formation simulation with a layered disk structure, showing the global picture. Formation of clump and spiral arms can be noticed during this early phase of the evolution due to gravitational instability. The inset shown the evolution of the innermost 10 au region of the disk (top to bottom). Highly dynamical, gaseous rings ubiquitously form in disks with dead zones at a distance of a few au. These rings undergo instabilities resulting in accretion of the accumulated material onto the central protostar. The plot at the bottom shows luminosity curve across such an instability, which is consistent with the observed FU Orionis outbursts in young stellar objects (Kadam et al. 2019, Kadam et al. 2020).