Solid accretion onto planetary cores in radiative disks

Zormpas, Apostolos; Picogna, Giovanni; Ercolano, Barbara und Kley, Wilhelm (2020): Solid accretion onto planetary cores in radiative disks. In: Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 638

Abstract

The solid accretion rate, which is necessary to grow gas giant planetary cores within the disk lifetime, has been a major constraint for theories of planet formation. We tested the solid accretion rate efficiency on planetary cores of different masses embedded in their birth disk by means of 3D radiation-hydrodynamics, where we followed the evolution of a swarm of embedded solids of different sizes. We found that by using a realistic equation of state and radiative cooling, the disk at 5 au is able to efficiently cool and reduce its aspect ratio. As a result, the pebble isolation mass is reached before the core grows to 10 M-circle plus, thus fully stopping the pebble flux and creating a transition disk. Moreover, the reduced isolation mass halts the solid accretion before the core reaches the critical mass, leading to a barrier to giant planet formation, and this explains the large abundance of super-Earth planets in the observed population.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Physics
• Subjects: 500 Science > 530 Physics
• ISSN: 0004-6361
• Language: English