2024MNRAS.533.2980H

Rings and gaps are routinely observed in the dust continuum emission of protoplanetary discs (PPDs). How they form and evolve remains debated. Previous studies have demonstrated the possibility of spontaneous gas rings and gaps formation in wind-launching discs. Here, we show that such gas substructures are unstable to the Rossby wave instability (RWI) through numerical simulations. Specifically, shorter wavelength azimuthal modes develop earlier, and longer wavelength ones dominate later, forming elongated (arc-like) anticyclonic vortices in the rings and (strongly magnetized) cyclonic vortices in the gaps that persist until the end of the simulation. Highly elongated vortices with aspect ratios of 10 or more are found to decay with time in our non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation, in contrast with the hydro case. This difference could be caused by magnetically induced motions, particularly strong meridional circulations with large values of the azimuthal component of the vorticity, which may be incompatible with the columnar structure preferred by vortices. The cyclonic and anticyclonic RWI vortices saturate at moderate levels, modifying but not destroying the rings and gaps in the radial gas distribution of the disc. In particular, they do not shut-off the poloidal magnetic flux accumulation in low-density regions and the characteristic meridional flow patterns that are crucial to the ring and gap formation in wind-launching discs. Nevertheless, the RWI and their associated vortices open up the possibility of producing non-axisymmetric dust features observed in a small fraction of PPDs through non-ideal MHD, although detailed dust treatment is needed to explore this possibility.