Global Modeling of Nebulae With Particle Growth, Drift, and Evaporation Fronts. II. The Influence of Porosity on Solids Evolution

TL;DR

This study models fractal aggregate growth in protoplanetary disks, showing porosity reduces radial drift effects and influences solid retention, but most solids still require planetesimal formation mechanisms like Streaming Instability.

Contribution

It introduces a model of fractal aggregate growth and compaction in evolving nebulae, highlighting porosity's role in solids evolution and drift behavior.

Findings

Porous aggregates experience less radial drift during growth.

Outside the snowline, fractal aggregates grow larger and drift inward faster.

Most disk solids are depleted without planetesimal formation mechanisms.

Abstract

Incremental particle growth in turbulent protoplanetary nebulae is limited by a combination of barriers that can slow or stall growth. Moreover, particles that grow massive enough to decouple from the gas are subject to inward radial drift which could lead to the depletion of most disk solids before planetesimals can form. Compact particle growth is probably not realistic. Rather, it is more likely that grains grow as fractal aggregates which may overcome this so-called radial drift barrier because they remain more coupled to the gas than compact particles of equal mass. We model fractal aggregate growth and compaction in a viscously evolving solar-like nebula for a range of turbulent intensities $\alpha_{\rm{t}} = 10^{-5}-10^{-2}$. We do find that radial drift is less influential for porous aggregates over much of their growth phase; however, outside the water snowline fractal aggregates can grow to much larger masses with larger Stokes numbers more quickly than compact particles, leading to rapid inward radial drift. As a result, disk solids outside the snowline out to $\sim 10-20$ AU are depleted earlier than in compact growth models, but outside $\sim 20$ AU material is retained much longer because aggregate Stokes numbers there remain lower initially. Nevertheless, we conclude even fractal models will lose most disk solids without the intervention of some leap-frog planetesimal forming mechanism such as the Streaming Instability (SI), though conditions for the SI are generally never satisfied, except for a brief period %for a brief stage around $\sim 0.2$ Myr at the snowline for $\alpha_{\rm{t}}=10^{-5}$.