Giant Planet Scatterings and Collisions: Hydrodynamics, Merger-Ejection Branching Ratio, and Properties of the Remnants

TL;DR

This study investigates fluid effects in giant planet encounters, revealing that hydrodynamics significantly influence merger outcomes, orbital properties, and spin distributions, thereby refining models of planetary system evolution.

Contribution

The paper introduces fitting formulae for fluid effects in giant planet encounters and demonstrates their impact on merger rates and orbital properties in N-body simulations.

Findings

Fluid effects double the effective collision radius, increasing merger likelihood.

Merger products exhibit broad spin and obliquity distributions.

Orbital distributions are unaffected, but scattering outcomes are significantly altered.

Abstract

Planetary systems with sufficiently small orbital spacings can experience planetary mergers and ejections. The branching ratio of mergers vs ejections depends sensitively on the treatment of planetary close encounters. Previous works have adopted a simple "sticky-sphere" prescription, whose validity is questionable. We apply both smoothed particle hydrodynamics and $N$-body integrations to investigate the fluid effects in close encounters between gas giants and the long-term evolution of closely-packed planetary systems. Focusing on parabolic encounters between Jupiter-like planets with $M_J$ and $2M_J$, we find that quick mergers occur when the impact parameter $r_p$ (the pericenter separation between the planets) is less than $2R_J$, and the merger conserved 97% of the initial mass. Strong tidal effects can affect the "binary-planet" orbit when $r_p$ is between $2R_J$ and $4R_J$. We quantify these effects using a set of fitting formulae that can be implemented in $N$-body codes. We run a suite of $N$-body simulations with and without the formulae for systems of two giant planets initially in unstable, nearly circular coplanar orbits. The fluid (tidal) effects significantly increase the branching ratio of planetary mergers relative to ejections by doubling the effective collision radius. While the fluid effects do not change the distributions of semi-major axis and eccentricity of each type of remnant planets (mergers vs surviving planets in ejections), the overall orbital properties of planet scattering remnants are strongly affected due to the change in the branching ratio. We also find that the merger products have broad distributions of spin magnitudes and obliquities.