Accretion of Rocky Planets by Hot Jupiters

TL;DR

This study investigates how rocky planets can be accreted by Hot Jupiters after their migration, exploring the probabilities of various outcomes and the impact velocities, to understand the diversity in Hot Jupiter properties.

Contribution

It introduces a probabilistic model of rocky planet accretion by Hot Jupiters, including collision velocities and outcomes, based on extensive simulations of chaotic orbital dynamics.

Findings

Planetary collisions are common at low eccentricity damping rates.

Impact velocity distributions vary with system parameters.

Collision outcomes influence Hot Jupiter core composition.

Abstract

The observed population of Hot Jupiters displays a stunning variety of physical properties, including a wide range of densities and core sizes for a given planetary mass. Motivated by the observational sample, this paper studies the accretion of rocky planets by Hot Jupiters, after the Jovian planets have finished their principal migration epoch and become parked in $\sim4$-day orbits. In this scenario, rocky planets form later and then migrate inward due to torques from the remaining circumstellar disk, which also damps the orbital eccentricity. This mechanism thus represents one possible channel for increasing the core masses and metallicities of Hot Jupiters. This paper determines probabilities for the possible end states for the rocky planet: collisions with the Jovian planets, accretion onto the star, ejection from the system, and long-term survival of both planets. These probabilities depend on the mass of the Jovian planet and its starting orbital eccentricity, as well as the eccentricity damping rate for the rocky planet. Since these systems are highly chaotic, a large ensemble ($N\sim10^3$) of simulations with effectively equivalent starting conditions is required. Planetary collisions are common when the eccentricity damping rate is sufficiently low, but are rare otherwise. For systems that experience planetary collisions, this work determines the distributions of impact velocities -- both speeds and impact parameters -- for the collisions. These velocity distributions help determine the consequences of the impacts, e.g., where energy and heavy elements are deposited within the giant planets.