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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2011
We use an improved version of the planetary evolution code described in Helled et al. (2006) to model the effect of opacity on the evolution of giant planets in the disk instability scenario. We find that changing the opacity law can cause significant changes in the evolutionary path of a protoplanet. Sufficiently high opacities cause oscillatory behavior that delays the final collapse. Peak luminosities just before collapse can exceed 10−5L⊙.