Size-selective accretion of dust onto CPDs: Low CPD masses and filtration of larger grains

TL;DR

This study uses advanced simulations to show that larger dust grains are inefficiently accreted into circumplanetary discs, resulting in low dust masses consistent with observational data.

Contribution

First multifluid 3D hydrodynamical simulations of gas and multiple dust sizes in CPDs, revealing size-dependent accretion and dust filtration effects.

Findings

Dust distribution truncated at small sizes, near zero at 1mm.

Large dust grains are inefficiently accreted due to filtration.

CPD dust masses are very low, matching observed fluxes.

Abstract

The major satellites of Jupiter and Saturn are believed to have formed in circumplanetary discs, which orbit forming giant protoplanets. Gas and dust in CPDs have different distributions and affect each other by drag, which varies with grain size. Yet simulations of multiple dust grain sizes with separate dynamics have not been done before. We seek to assess how much dust of each grain size there is in circumplanetary discs. We run multifluid 3D hydrodynamical simulations including gas and four discrete grain sizes of dust from 1$\mu$m to 1mm, representing a continuous distribution. We consider a 1 $M_\mathrm{Jup}$ protoplanet embedded in a protoplanetary disc around a 1 $M_{\odot}$ star. Our results show a truncated MRN distribution at smaller grain sizes, which starts to tail off by $a=100\mu$m and is near zero at 1mm. Large dust grains, which hold most of the dust mass, have very inefficient accretion to the CPD, due to dust filtration. Therefore CPDs' dust masses must be small, with mass ratio ~ a few $\times 10^{-6}$ to the protoplanet. These masses and the corresponding millimetre opacities are in line with CPD fluxes observed to date.