# N-body simulations of planet formation via pebble accretion I: First   Results

**Authors:** Soko Matsumura, Ramon Brasser, and Shigeru Ida

arXiv: 1705.04264 · 2017-11-29

## TL;DR

This study uses N-body simulations incorporating pebble accretion to explore planet formation, revealing dependencies on metallicity and dynamical evolution, but struggles to match observed exoplanet properties due to migration issues.

## Contribution

First global N-body simulations of planet formation via pebble accretion including gas effects and migration, comparing outcomes with observed exoplanet systems.

## Key findings

- Planet formation efficiency depends on stellar metallicity for all planet types.
- Dynamical evolution explains the wide density range of Earths and Super-Earths.
- Ejection of small planets suggests a free-floating planet population.

## Abstract

Context. Planet formation with pebbles has been proposed to solve a couple of long-standing issues in the classical formation model. Some sophisticated simulations have been done to confirm the efficiency of pebble accretion. However, there has not been any global N-body simulations that compare the outcomes of planet formation via pebble accretion with observed extrasolar planetary systems. Aims. In this paper, we study the effects of a range of initial parameters of planet formation via pebble accretion, and present the first results of our simulations. Methods. We incorporate the pebble accretion model by Ida et al. (2016) in the N-body code SyMBA (Duncan et al. 1998), along with the effects of gas accretion, eccentricity and inclination damping and planet migration in the disc. Results. We confirm that pebble accretion leads to a variety of planetary systems, but have difficulty in reproducing observed properties of exoplanetary systems, such as planetary mass, semimajor axis, and eccentricity distributions. The main reason behind this is a too-efficient type I migration, which sensitively depends on the disc model. However, our simulations also lead to a few interesting predictions. First, we find that formation efficiencies of planets depend on the stellar metallicities, not only for giant planets, but also for Earths (Es) and Super-Earths (SEs). The dependency for Es/SEs is subtle. Although higher metallicity environments lead to faster formation of a larger number of Es/SEs, they also tend to be lost later via dynamical instability. Second, our results indicate that a wide range of bulk densities observed for Es and SEs is a natural consequence of dynamical evolution of planetary systems. Third, the ejection trend of our simulations suggest that one free-floating E/SE may be expected for two smaller-mass planets.

## Full text

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## Figures

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## References

111 references — full list in the complete paper: https://tomesphere.com/paper/1705.04264/full.md

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Source: https://tomesphere.com/paper/1705.04264