Early Stages of Planet Formation in Distorted Disks: Formation of Pressure Traps

Distorted protoplanetary disks constitute a fertile ground for the formation of pressure traps. One of the major challenges in the early stages of planet formation is the meter-size barrier, which sets severe constraints on the growth timescale of planets. Many solutions were suggested to the meter-size barrier, among them is pressure traps, i.e. regions in the disk in which the pressure differs from the general gradient in the disk, such that the drifting of planetesimals is halted. However, the origin of pressure traps is not clear yet and hence so does their profile. Distorted disks are ubiquitous among accretion disks in general and protoplanetary disks in particular, and we claim that they give rise to the formation of pressure traps, which assist in overcoming on the meter-size barrier . We derive the profile of the formed pressure trap induced by a general external torque and discuss the implications on the initial stages of planet formation in several environments including circumbinary disks and gap edges.