Growing Mars fast: High-resolution GPU simulations of embryo formation

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution GPU simulations to explore how initial conditions influence embryo formation and composition in the early solar system, shedding light on Mars's rapid growth and asteroid belt dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces high-resolution N-body simulations with up to 41,000 planetesimals to analyze embryo growth, highlighting the impact of initial conditions and giant planet orbits.

Findings

Embryo growth depends on initial planetesimal mass, gas disc decay, and giant planet eccentricity.

Secular resonances can implant asteroid belt material into the terrestrial region.

Initial planetary orbits influence material accretion and embryo composition.

Abstract

Recent high precision meteoritic data improve constraints on the formation timescale and bulk composition of the terrestrial planets. High resolution N-body simulations allow direct comparison of embryo growth timescale and accretion zones to these constraints. In this paper, we present results of high resolution simulations for embryo formation from a disc of up to 41,000 fully-self gravitating planetesimals with the GPU-based N-body code GENGA. Our results indicate that the growth of embryos are highly dependent on the initial conditions. More massive initial planetesimals, a shorter gas disc decay timescale and initially eccentric Jupiter and Saturn (EJS) all lead to faster growth of embryos. Asteroid belt material can thereby be implanted into the terrestrial planet region via sweeping secular resonances. This could possibly explain the rapid growth of Mars within 10 Myr inferred from its Hf-W chronology. The sweeping secular resonance almost completely clears the asteroid belt and deposits this material in the Mercury-Venus region, altering the composition of embryos there. This could result in embryos in the Mercury-Venus region accreting an unexpectedly high mass fraction from beyond 2 AU. Changing the initial orbits of Jupiter and Saturn to more circular (CJS) or assuming embryos formed in a gas free environment removes the sweeping secular resonance effect and thus greatly decreases material accreted from beyond 2 AU for Mercury-Venus region embryos. We therefore propose that rock samples from Mercury and Venus could aid greatly in deducing the condition and lifetime of the initial protoplanetary gas disc during planetesimal and embryo formation, as well as the initial architecture of the giant planets.