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Mass limits for stationary protoplanetary accretion disks

The collapse of interstellar gaseous clouds towards a protostar leads to the formation of accretion disks around the central star. Such disks can be dynamically stable if they settle in an axisymmetric state. In this letter, we investigate the long-term stability of astrophysical viscous disks around various protostars. We apply an implicit numerical code which solves the equations of radiation hydrodynamics and treats turbulence-induced viscosity according to the $α$-viscosity model. We show how the viscosity is related to the disk mass. A stability criterion to determine the maximum disk mass can be formulated. We analyse such instabilities for a variety of radial points with different orbital distances from the host star and discuss the feedback on the disk in the event of an unstable protoplanetary disk. Additionally, we examine the critical disk-mass for disks with variable outer boundaries and compare them to observations of protostellar disks in the Upper Scorpius OB Association and near the Lupus complex. We derive an easily applicable method to obtain an estimate for maximum disk masses when the outer disk radius ins known.