Formation of Terrestrial Planets from Protoplanets under a Realistic Accretion Condition

TL;DR

This study introduces a realistic accretion condition for protoplanet collisions in N-body simulations, revealing that while collision outcomes differ, the final planetary characteristics remain largely unaffected.

Contribution

First implementation of a realistic collision model in N-body simulations of terrestrial planet formation, improving accuracy over the perfect accretion assumption.

Findings

About half of collisions do not lead to accretion under the realistic model.

Final planetary number, mass, and orbital elements are similar in both models.

Planet spin angular velocity is about 30% smaller with realistic accretion.

Abstract

The final stage of terrestrial planet formation is known as the giant impact stage where protoplanets collide with one another to form planets. So far this stage has been mainly investigated by N-body simulations with an assumption of perfect accretion in which all collisions lead to accretion. However, this assumption breaks for collisions with high velocity and/or a large impact parameter. We derive an accretion condition for protoplanet collisions in terms of impact velocity and angle and masses of colliding bodies, from the results of numerical collision experiments. For the first time, we adopt this realistic accretion condition in N-body simulations of terrestrial planet formation from protoplanets. We compare the results with those with perfect accretion and show how the accretion condition affects terrestrial planet formation. We find that in the realistic accretion model, about half of collisions do not lead to accretion. However, the final number, mass, orbital elements, and even growth timescale of planets are barely affected by the accretion condition. For the standard protoplanetary disk model, typically two Earth-sized planets form in the terrestrial planet region over about 100 M years in both realistic and perfect accretion models. We also find that for the realistic accretion model, the spin angular velocity is about 30% smaller than that for the perfect accretion model that is as large as the critical spin angular velocity for rotational instability. The spin angular velocity and obliquity obey Gaussian and isotropic distributions, respectively, independently of the accretion condition.