These videos are associated with the paper Continuous mass ablation of planets engulfed in stellar envelopes (Lau et al. submitted, 2026).
Volume rendering showing the ablation of planetary material in the fiducial simulation at a grid resolution of 1536x1024x1024 (1.6 billion cells). Planetary material is traced by a passive scalar. Credits to Javier Morán-Fraile.
Slices of the fiducial simulation in the z=0 plane. Top panel: Passive scalar showing planetary material. Middle panel: Density. Bottom panel: Mach number.
Velocity divergence in the z = 0 slice of the fiducial simulation. Shock fronts appear as thin blue filaments of strongly negative velocity divergence, indicating abrupt compression.
Velocity divergence in the z = 0 slice of the fiducial simulation. Shock fronts appear as thin blue filaments of strongly negative velocity divergence, indicating abrupt compression.
Illustration of how the flow pattern at a fixed time varies with increasing resolution. The snapshots show the planet passive scalar in the xy-plane for the fiducial simulation.
Comparison of simulations with different upstream Mach numbers, all with f_m = f_e = 1 and at the grid resolution of 768x512x512. Each panel shows a density slice in the xy-plane.