Rocky histories: The effect of high excitations on the formation of rocky planets

TL;DR

This study investigates how high-energy collisions during planet formation influence the diversity of core-mass fractions in rocky planets, emphasizing the roles of initial conditions and debris loss in shaping planetary characteristics.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates that specific initial conditions can increase high-energy collisions, but multiple processes tend to average out CMFs, with high-CMF planets forming mainly below 0.5 Earth masses.

Findings

High-energy collisions increase CMF diversity.

Debris loss significantly affects planet mass and CMF.

High-CMF planets are mostly below 0.5 Earth masses.

Abstract

Rocky planets both in and outside of our solar system are observed to have a range of core-mass fractions (CMFs). Imperfect collisions can preferentially strip mantle material from a planet, changing its CMF, and are therefore thought to be the most likely cause of this observed CMF variation. However, previous work that implements these collisions into N-body simulations of planet formation has struggled to reliably form high CMF super-Earths. In this work, we specify our initial conditions and simulation parameters to maximize the prevalence of high-energy, CMF-changing collisions in order to form planets with highly diverse CMFs. High-energy collisions have a large $v_{imp}/v_{esc}$ ratio, so we maximize this ratio by starting simulations with high-eccentricity and inclination disks to increase the difference in their orbital velocities, maximizing $v_{imp}$. Additionally, we minimize $v_{esc}$ by starting with small embryos. The final planets undergo more high-energy, debris-producing collisions, and experience significant CMF change over their formation. However, we find that a number of processes work together to average out the CMF of a planet over time, therefore we do not consistently form high-CMF, high mass planets. We do form high-CMF planets below 0.5 $M_{\oplus}$. Additionally, we find in these highly eccentric environments, loss of debris mass due to collisional grinding has a significant effect on final planet masses and CMFs, resulting in smaller planets and a higher average planet CMF. This work highlights the importance of improving measurements of high-density planets to better constrain their CMFs.