  In protoplanetary disks, the inner boundary between the turbulent and laminar
regions could be a promising site for planet formation, thanks to the trapping
of solids at the boundary itself or in vortices generated by the Rossby wave
instability. At the interface, the disk thermodynamics and the turbulent
dynamics are entwined because of the importance of turbulent dissipation and
thermal ionization. Numerical models of the boundary, however, have neglected
the thermodynamics, and thus miss a part of the physics. The aim of this paper
is to numerically investigate the interplay between thermodynamics and dynamics
in the inner regions of protoplanetary disks by properly accounting for
turbulent heating and the dependence of the resistivity on the local
temperature. Using the Godunov code RAMSES, we performed a series of 3D global
numerical simulations of protoplanetary disks in the cylindrical limit,
including turbulent heating and a simple prescription for radiative cooling. We
find that waves excited by the turbulence significantly heat the dead zone, and
we subsequently provide a simple theoretical framework for estimating the wave
heating and consequent temperature profile. In addition, our simulations reveal
that the dead-zone inner edge can propagate outward into the dead zone, before
staling at a critical radius that can be estimated from a mean-field model. The
engine driving the propagation is in fact density wave heating close to the
interface. A pressure maximum appears at the interface in all simulations, and
we note the emergence of the Rossby wave instability in simulations with
extended azimuth. Our simulations illustrate the complex interplay between
thermodynamics and turbulent dynamics in the inner regions of protoplanetary
disks. They also reveal how important activity at the dead-zone interface can
be for the dead-zone thermodynamic structure.
