Tracing the formation history of giant planets in protoplanetary disks with Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Sulphur

TL;DR

This study investigates how elemental ratios like C/N, N/O, and C/O, along with sulfur and stellar normalization, can reveal the formation and migration history of giant planets in protoplanetary disks extending to hundreds of au.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive model combining n-body simulations and disk chemistry to break degeneracies in planetary formation pathways using elemental ratios.

Findings

C/O ratio alone is limited in constraining formation pathways.

Nitrogen and sulfur ratios help distinguish formation and migration histories.

Normalized elemental ratios provide insights into planetary metallicity and solid accretion.

Abstract

The composition of giant planets is imprinted by their migration history and the compositional structure of their hosting disks. Studies in recent literature investigate how the abundances of C and O can constrain the formation pathways of giant planets forming within few tens of au from the star. New ALMA observations, however, suggest planet-forming regions possibly extending to hundreds of au. We explore the implications of these wider formation environments through n-body simulations of growing and migrating giant planets embedded in planetesimal disks, coupled with a compositional model of the protoplanetary disk where volatiles are inherited from the molecular cloud and refractories are calibrated against extrasolar and Solar System data. We find that the C/O ratio provides limited insight on the formation pathways of giant planets that undergo large-scale migration. This limitation can be overcome thanks to nitrogen and sulphur. Jointly using the C/N, N/O and C/O ratios breaks any degeneracy in the formation and migration tracks of giant planets. The use of elemental ratios normalized to the respective stellar ratios supplies additional information on the nature of giant planets, thanks to the relative volatility of O, C and N in disks. When the planetary metallicity is dominated by the accretion of solids C/N* $>$ C/O* $>$ N/O* (* denoting this normalized scale), otherwise N/O* $>$ C/O* $>$ C/N*. The S/N ratio provides an additional independent probe into the metallicity of giant planets and their accretion of solids.