  In protoplanetary disks, the inner boundary between the turbulent and laminar
regions is a promising site for planet formation because solids may become
trapped at the interface itself or in vortices generated by the Rossby wave
instability. The disk thermodynamics and the turbulent dynamics at that
location are entwined because of the importance of turbulent dissipation on
thermal ionization and, conversely, of thermal ionisation on the turbulence.
However, most previous work has neglected this dynamical coupling and have thus
missed a key element of the physics in this region. In this paper, we aim to
determine how the the interplay between ionization and turbulence impacts on
the formation and evolution of vortices at the interface between the active and
the dead zones. Using the Godunov code RAMSES, we have performed a 3D
magnetohydrodynamic global numerical simulation of a cylindrical model of an
MRI--turbulent protoplanetary disk, including thermodynamical effects as well
as a temperature-dependant resistivity. The comparison with an analogous 2D
viscous simulation has been extensively used to help identify the relevant
physical processes and the disk's long-term evolution. We find that a vortex
formed at the interface, due to Rossby wave instability, migrates inward and
penetrates the active zone where it is destroyed by turbulent motions.
Subsequently, a new vortex emerges a few tens of orbits later at the interface,
and the new vortex migrates inward too. The sequence repeats itself, resulting
in cycles of vortex formation, migration, and disruption. This behavior is
successfully reproduced using two different codes. In this paper, we
characterize this vortex life cycle and discuss its implications for planet
formation at the dead/active interface. Our simulations highlight the
importance of thermodynamical processes for the vortex evolution at the dead
zone inner edge.
