Accretion of the Moon from non-canonical disks

TL;DR

This study models the Moon's accretion from non-canonical, more compact impact-generated discs, revealing that such discs require higher initial mass and influence the Moon's orbital dynamics and resonance capture.

Contribution

It provides a detailed simulation of lunar formation from non-canonical impacts, highlighting conditions needed for Moon formation and its orbital evolution.

Findings

Non-canonical discs must be more massive to form a lunar-mass Moon.

The Moon's final semimajor axis is about 7 Earth radii.

Capture into the evection resonance depends on impact conditions.

Abstract

Impacts that leave the Earth-Moon system with a large excess in angular momentum have recently been advocated as a means of generating a protolunar disc with a composition that is nearly identical to that of the Earth's mantle. We here investigate the accretion of the Moon from discs generated by such "non-canonical" impacts, which are typically more compact than discs produced by canonical impacts and have a higher fraction of their mass initially located inside the Roche limit. Our model predicts a similar overall accretional history for both canonical and non-canonical discs, with the Moon forming in three consecutive steps over hundreds of years. However, we find that, to yield a lunar-mass Moon, the more compact non-canonical discs must initially be more massive than implied by prior estimates, and only a few of the discs produced by impact simulations to date appear to meet this condition. Non-canonical impacts require that capture of the Moon into the evection resonance with the Sun reduced the Earth-Moon angular momentum by a factor of 2 or more. We find that the Moon's semimajor axis at the end of its accretion is approximately $7R_\oplus$, which is comparable to the location of the evection resonance for a post-impact Earth with a 2.5 h rotation period in the absence of a disc. Thus, the dynamics of the Moon's assembly may directly affect its ability to be captured into the resonance.