Accretion among preplanetary bodies: the many faces of runaway growth

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new numerical model to study the collisional evolution of preplanetary bodies during runaway and oligarchic growth phases, highlighting the impact of initial velocities and fragments on planetary formation.

Contribution

The authors develop and validate a novel numerical model that accurately simulates gravitationally-enhanced growth, providing new insights into the transition from runaway to oligarchic growth in planet formation.

Findings

Runaway growth leads to a power-law size distribution at the high-mass end.

Largest bodies accrete from all mass bins, invalidating simple two-component models.

External stirring and initial velocities significantly influence growth dynamics.

Abstract

(abridged) When preplanetary bodies reach proportions of ~1 km or larger in size, their accretion rate is enhanced due to gravitational focusing (GF). We have developed a new numerical model to calculate the collisional evolution of the gravitationally-enhanced growth stage. We validate our approach against existing N-body and statistical codes. Using the numerical model, we explore the characteristics of the runaway growth and the oligarchic growth accretion phases starting from an initial population of single planetesimal radius R_0. In models where the initial random velocity dispersion (as derived from their eccentricity) starts out below the escape speed of the planetesimal bodies, the system experiences runaway growth. We find that during the runaway growth phase the size distribution remains continuous but evolves into a power-law at the high mass end, consistent with previous studies. Furthermore, we find that the largest body accretes from all mass bins; a simple two component approximation is inapplicable during this stage. However, with growth the runaway body stirs up the random motions of the planetesimal population from which it is accreting. Ultimately, this feedback stops the fast growth and the system passes into oligarchy, where competitor bodies from neighboring zones catch up in terms of mass. Compared to previous estimates, we find that the system leaves the runaway growth phase at a somewhat larger radius. Furthermore, we assess the relevance of small, single-size fragments on the growth process. In classical models, where the initial velocity dispersion of bodies is small, these do not play a critical role during the runaway growth; however, in models that are characterized by large initial relative velocities due to external stirring of their random motions, a situation can emerge where fragments dominate the accretion.