On the Growth of Dust Particles in a Non-Uniform Solar Nebula

It has recently been shown that the combined effect of gas drag and pressure gradients causes solid objects to rapidly migrate toward the location of maximum pressure in a gaseous nebula [1, 2]. Such rapid migrations result in the accumulation of objects in the vicinity of local pressure enhancement and may increase the rates of their collisions and coagulations. In a disk with a mixture of gas and small solid particles, the motion of an object is also affected by its interaction with the particulate background. An object may, in such an environment, sweep up smaller particles and grow larger during its gas-drag induced migration. In this paper I present a summary of a study of the growth-rates of dust grains to centimeter-sized objects in a nebula with a local pressure enhancement.