Collisional Mass Loss and Change of Volatile Content in Planet Formation

Autor(en)

Thomas Maindl, Nader Haghighipour, Christoph Burger, David Bancelin, Christoph Schäfer

Abstrakt

It is widely accepted that the majority of Earth’s water was delivered to it by water carrying planetesimals and planetary embryos from the outer part of the asteroid belt. Modern planet formation simulations show this process with high resolution, but typically still treat embryo growth and water delivery in a rudimentary way: perfect merging is assumed whenever a collision occurs. This neglects collisional loss of material - especially volatiles - and hence leads to planetary water contents that are far too high. Faced with the challenge of estimating planetary embryo growth and their water content with increased accuracy, we study typical collision scenarios from our previous n-body simulations. These scenarios differ in the masses of the involved planetary embryos, their water contents, the impact angles, and the collision speeds. We perform several suites of detailed simulations with our smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) collision code covering part of the mentioned parameter space. We thrive for deriving a reasonable analytic estimate for collisional mass loss and volatile transfer that can (a) be included efficiently in planet formation simulations and (b) be used as a post-formation means to estimate realistic water budgets of terrestrial planets. While more extensive parameter studies are needed for deriving such a relation, we present first results valid for the simulated range of masses, velocities, and collision angles and discuss their implications for models of terrestrial planet formation.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Astrophysik

Externe Organisation(en)

University of Hawaii, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

Publikationsdatum

10-2017

ÖFOS 2012

103003 Astronomie, 103004 Astrophysik

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/f8321e7c-1c98-48a5-bbc9-4a6dddc22723