Collisional heating of icy planetesimals. I. Catastrophic collisions

TL;DR

This study uses thermophysical modeling to determine the size limits and lifetime constraints of primordial planetesimal populations involved in collisional cascades, considering volatile retention and thermal evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed thermophysical analysis of collisional heating effects on icy planetesimals, constraining their sizes and the primordial disc's lifetime based on volatile preservation.

Findings

Only small bodies (<20-64 km) could have participated in collisional cascades without losing hypervolatiles.

Disc lifetime constraints vary with distance, requiring less than 9 Myr at 15 au and 50-70 Myr at 30 au.

A larger disc population would need to be significantly smaller than current estimates to match observed volatile retention.

Abstract

Planetesimals in the primordial disc may have experienced a collisional cascade. If so, the comet nuclei later placed in the Kuiper belt, scattered disc, and Oort Cloud would primarily be fragments and collisional rubble piles from that cascade. However, the heating associated with the collisions cannot have been strong enough to remove the hypervolatiles that are trapped within more durable ices, because comet nuclei are rich in hypervolatiles. This places constraints on the diameter of the largest bodies allowed to participate in collisional cascades, and limits the primordial disc lifetime or population size. In this paper, the thermophysical code NIMBUS is used to study the thermal evolution of planetesimals before, during, and after catastrophic collisions. The loss of CO during segregation of $\mathrm{CO_2:CO}$ mixtures and during crystallisation of amorphous $\mathrm{H_2O}$ is calculated, as well as mobilisation and internal relocation of $\mathrm{CO_2}$. If an amorphous $\mathrm{H_2O}$ host existed, and was protected by a $\mathrm{CO_2:CO}$ heat sink, only diameter $D<20\,\mathrm{km}$ (inner disc) and $D<64\,\mathrm{km}$ (outer disc) bodies could have been involved in a collisional cascade. If $\mathrm{CO_2}$ was the only CO host, the critical diameters drop to $D<20$-$32\mathrm{km}$. Avoiding disruption of larger bodies requires a primordial disc lifetime of $<9\,\mathrm{Myr}$ at $15\,\mathrm{au}$ and $<50$-$70\,\mathrm{Myr}$ at $30\,\mathrm{au}$. Alternatively, if a $450\,\mathrm{Myr}$ disc lifetime is required to associate the primordial disc disruption with the Late Heavy Bombardment, the disc population size must have been 6-60 times below current estimates.