Evolution of Snow Line in Optically Thick Protoplanetary Disks: Effects of Water Ice Opacity and Dust Grain Size

TL;DR

This study models the evolution of the snow line in optically thick protoplanetary disks, highlighting how water ice opacity and dust grain size influence its migration and implications for planet formation.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical simulation approach that incorporates ice opacity and dust grain size effects on snow line evolution in protoplanetary disks.

Findings

Snow line moves inward at high accretion rates and outward at low rates.

Ice opacity increases snow line distance by up to 1.6 times.

Water-devoid planetesimal formation in the terrestrial zone is challenging.

Abstract

Evolution of a snow line in an optically-thick protoplanetary disk is investigated with numerical simulations. The ice-condensing region in the disk is obtained by calculating the temperature and the density with the 1+1D approach. The snow line migrates as the mass accretion rate (\dot{M}) in the disk decreases with time. Calculations are carried out from an early phase with high disk accretion rates (\dot{M} \sim 10^{-7} M_sun/yr) to a later phase with low disk accretion rates (\dot{M} \sim 10^{-12} M_sun/yr) using the same numerical method. It is found that the snow line moves inward for \dot{M} > 10^{-10} M_sun/yr, while it gradually moves outward in the later evolution phase with \dot{M} < 10^{-10} M_sun/yr. In addition to the silicate opacity, the ice opacity is taken into consideration. In the inward migration phase, the additional ice opacity increases the distance of the snow line from the central star by a factor of 1.3 for dust grains < 10 micro-meter in size and 1.6 for > 100 micro-meter. It is inevitable that the snow line comes inside the Earth's orbit in the course of the disk evolution, if the alpha viscosity parameter is in a range 0.001-0.1, the dust-to-gas mass ratio is higher than a tenth of the solar abundance value, and the dust grains are smaller than 1 mm. The formation of water-devoid planetesimals in the terrestrial planet region seems to be difficult throughout the disk evolution, which imposes a new challenge to planet formation theory.