The role of vortices in multi-dimensional protoplanetary disks

The majority of young low-mass stars are surrounded by disks, consisted of large reservoirs of gas and dust out of which planetary systems eventually form. In the recent years, high spatial resolution observations of such disks have revealed many details that are providing interesting constraints on the disk physics as well as dust dynamics, both of which are essential for understanding planet formation. In particular, large-scale features (e.g., gaps) and asymmetries (e.g., vortices?) are detected. In this talk we will describe the Rossby wave/vortex instability and a new type of “heavy core” instability related to dust, both of which might be responsible for explaining observations. We will discuss how gas+dust two-fluid modeling can be used to help interpret the observations and constrain the parameters in such systems.