Fingerprints of the protosolar cloud collapse in the Solar System I: Distribution of presolar short-lived $^{26}$Al

TL;DR

This study models the heterogeneous collapse of the protosolar cloud to explain the observed variations in $^{26}$Al in early Solar System materials, supporting a scenario of initial heterogeneity that becomes homogeneous after infall ceases.

Contribution

It introduces a model of cloud collapse with heterogeneous $^{26}$Al distribution, explaining CAI variations without requiring radioactive decay differences.

Findings

CAIs inherit the $^{26}$Al/$^{27}$Al ratio from infalling matter.

Variations in $^{26}$Al among CAIs can be explained by initial heterogeneity.

A monotonic $^{26}$Al distribution suggests a sharp increase near the cloud center.

Abstract

The short-lived radionuclide $^{26}$Al is widely used to determine the relative ages of chondrite components and timescales of physical and thermal events that attended the formation of the Solar System. However, an important assumption for using $^{26}$Al as a chronometer is its homogeneous distribution in the disk. Yet, the oldest components in chondrites, the Ca-Al-rich inclusions (CAIs), which are usually considered as time anchors for this chronometer, show evidence of $^{26}$Al/$^{27}$Al variations independent of radioactive decay. Since their formation epoch may have been contemporaneous with the collapse of the parent cloud that formed the disk, this suggests that $^{26}$Al was heteregeneously distributed in the cloud. We model the collapse of such an heterogeneous cloud, using two different $^{26}$Al distributions (monotonic and non-monotonic), and follow its re-distribution in the first condensates and bulk dust that populate the forming disk. We find that CAIs inherit the $^{26}$Al/$^{27}$Al ratio of the matter infalling at the time of their formation, so that variations of $^{26}$Al/$^{27}$Al among primordial CAIs can be accounted for, independently of radioactive decay. The prevalence of a canonical ratio among them and its necessity for the differentiation of the first planetesimals suggest a (monotonic) scenario where $^{26}$Al sharply rose relatively close to the center of the protosolar cloud and essentially remained at a high level outward (rather than decreased since). As the $ ^{26}$Al abundance would be relatively homogeneous after cessation of infall, this would warrant the use of the Al-Mg chronometer from the formation of "regular" CAIs onward, to chondrules and chondrite accretion.