  Gas rich dusty circumstellar discs observed around young stellar objects are
believed to be the birthplace of planets and planetary systems. Recent
observations revealed that large-scale horseshoe-like brightness asymmetries
are present in dozens of transitional protoplanetary discs. Theoretical studies
suggest that these brightness asymmetries bf could be caused by large-scale
anticyclonic vortices triggered by the Rossby Wave Instability (RWI), which can
be excited at the edges of the accretionally inactive region, the dead zone
edge. Since vortices may play a key role in planet formation, investigating the
conditions of the onset of RWI and the long-term evolution of vortices is
inevitable. The aim of our work was to explore the effect of disc geometry (the
vertical thickness of the disc), viscosity, the width of the transition region
at the dead zone edge, and the disc mass on the onset, lifetime, strength and
evolution of vortices formed in the disc. We performed a parametric study
assuming different properties for the disc and the viscosity transition by
running 1980 2D hydrodynamic simulations in the locally isothermal assumption
with disc self-gravity included. Our results revealed that long-lived,
large-scale vortex formation favours a shallow surface density slope and low-
or moderate disc masses with Toomre $Q \lesssim 1/h$, where $h$ is the
geometric aspect ratio of the disc. In general, in low viscosity models,
stronger vortices form. However, rapid vortex decay and re-formation is more
widespread in these discs.
