Effects of Planetesimal Accretion on the Thermal and Structural Evolution of Sub-Neptunes

TL;DR

This study investigates how planetesimal accretion influences the thermal evolution and density diversity of sub-Neptune exoplanets, revealing significant impacts on their structure and atmospheric mass over billions of years.

Contribution

It introduces modified MESA simulations to quantify how planetesimal accretion affects the long-term evolution and density of sub-Neptune planets, highlighting stochastic effects.

Findings

Planetesimal accretion can cause up to 5% density variation after several Gyr.

Accretion increases planetary radius during rapid growth phases.

Different accretion histories lead to diverse envelope mass fractions.

Abstract

A remarkable discovery of NASA's Kepler mission is the wide diversity in the average densities of planets of similar mass. After gas disk dissipation, fully formed planets could interact with nearby planetesimals from a remnant planetesimal disk. These interactions would often lead to planetesimal accretion due to the relatively high ratio between the planet size and the hill radius for typical planets. We present calculations using the open-source stellar evolution toolkit MESA (Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics) modified to include the deposition of planetesimals into the H/He envelopes of sub-Neptunes (~1-20 MEarth). We show that planetesimal accretion can alter the mass-radius isochrones for these planets. The same initial planet as a result of the same total accreted planetesimal mass can have up to ~5% difference in mean densities several Gyr after the last accretion due to inherent stochasticity of the accretion process. During the phase of rapid accretion these differences are more dramatic. The additional energy deposition from the accreted planetesimals increase the ratio between the planet's radius to that of the core during rapid accretion, which in turn leads to enhanced loss of atmospheric mass. As a result, the same initial planet can end up with very different envelope mass fractions. These differences manifest as differences in mean densities long after accretion stops. These effects are particularly important for planets initially less massive than ~10 MEarth and with envelope mass fraction less than ~10%, thought to be the most common type of planets discovered by Kepler.