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The streaming instability is one of the most exciting developments in planet formation theory. It is a mechanism which drives dust in discs to spontaneously collect into clumps, allowing for rapid formation of planetesimals. The conditions in the disc however, can affect how effectively the streaming instability collects solids in the disc. Our work has focused on studying how the streaming instability is affected when considering dust where the particle sizes are described as a continuous distribution (polydisperse) rather than a single size (monodisperse). Our results show the polydisperse streaming instability exhibiting much decreased growth compared to the mono disperse streaming instability, at least, when considering power law dust particle size distributions. The growth of the polydisperse streaming instability for power law distributions is also strongly damped by turbulence, more so than mono disperse streaming instability growth. Considering more realistic dust size distributions, however, changes this story. The polydisperse streaming instability regains many features of the mono disperse streaming instability, and this regained growth is also more resilient to turbulence. 
Overall our work has shown how the streaming instability can be a mechanism for planet formation under specific circumstances. This draws a connection between planetesimal formation and local disc environment.

The Polydisperse Streaming Instability