A Unified Framework for Producing CAI Melting, Wark-Lovering Rims and Bowl-Shaped CAIs

TL;DR

This paper proposes a unified model explaining the formation of CAI melting, Wark-Lovering Rims, and bowl-shaped CAIs through high-speed ejection and re-entry processes in the early solar system.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive framework linking CAI shapes, rims, and melting processes with their dynamic ejection and re-entry in the solar accretion disc.

Findings

CAIs were ejected at hypersonic speeds from the inner disc.

Re-entry heating caused partial or complete evaporation of CAIs.

The model's conditions match observed CAI features and compositions.

Abstract

Calcium Aluminium Inclusions (CAIs) formed in the Solar System, some 4,567 million years ago. CAIs are almost always surrounded by Wark-Lovering Rims (WLRs), which are a sequence of thin, mono/bi-mineralic layers of refractory minerals, with a total thickness in the range of 1 to 100 microns. Recently, some CAIs have been found that have tektite-like bowl-shapes. To form such shapes, the CAI must have travelled through a rarefied gas at hypersonic speeds. We show how CAIs may have been ejected from the inner solar accretion disc via the centrifugal interaction between the solar magnetosphere and the inner disc rim. They subsequently punched through the hot, inner disc rim wall at hypersonic speeds. This re-entry heating partially or completely evaporated the CAIs. Such evaporation could have significantly increased the metal abundances of the inner disc rim. High speed movement through the inner disc produced WLRs. To match the observed thickness of WLRs required metal abundances at the inner disc wall that are of order ten times that of standard solar abundances. The CAIs cooled as they moved away from the protosun, the deduced CAI cooling rates are consistent with the CAI cooling rates obtained from experiment and observation. The speeds and gas densities required to form bowl-shaped CAIs are also consistent with the expected speeds and gas densities for larger, ~ 1 cm, CAIs punching through an inner accretion disc wall.