On planet formation around supermassive black holes and the grain disruption barriers by radiative torques

TL;DR

This paper investigates how radiative torques in AGN environments can prevent dust grain growth and planet formation around supermassive black holes, highlighting new barriers like rotational disruption and ice desorption.

Contribution

It introduces the impact of radiative torque disruption and ice desorption as significant barriers to dust coagulation and planet formation in AGN tori, especially in clumpy models.

Findings

Grain growth is possible in smooth torus models.

RATD strongly constrains grain growth in clumpy models.

Ice mantles are quickly detached, reducing coagulation efficiency.

Abstract

It has recently been suggested that planets can form by dust coagulation in the torus of active galactic nuclei (AGN) with low luminosity of $L_{\rm bol}\lesssim 10^{42} erg s^{-1}$, constituting a new class of exoplanets orbiting the supermassive black hole called \textit{blanets}. However, large dust grains in the AGN torus may be rotationally disrupted by the Radiative Torque Disruption (RATD) mechanism due to AGN radiation feedback, which would prevent the blanet formation. To test this scenario, we adopt the simple smooth and clumpy dust/gas distribution inside the torus region to study the effect of RATD on the evolution of composite dust grains in the midplane of the torus. We found that grain growth and then blanet formation are possible in the smooth torus model. However, in the clumpy torus model, grain growth will be strongly constrained by RATD, assuming the gas density distribution as adopted in Wada et al. We also found that icy grain mantles inside clumps are quickly detached from the grain core by rotational desorption, reducing the sticking coefficient between icy grains and coagulation efficiency. The grain rotational disruption and ice desorption occur on timescales much shorter than the growth time up to a factor of $\sim 10^{4}$, which are the new barriers that grain growth must overcome to form blanets. Further studies with more realistic AGN models are required to better constrain the effect of RATD on grain growth and blanet formation hypothesis around low luminosity AGN.