Close-in planetesimal formation by pile-up of drifting pebbles

By J. Dra̧żkowska, Y. Alibert, B. Moore. 2016

176 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The consistency of planet formation models suffers from the disconnection between the regime of small and large bodies. This is primarily caused by so-called growth barriers: the direct growth of larger bodies is halted at centimetre-sized objects and particular conditions are required for the formation of larger, gravitationally bound planetesimals. We aim to connect models of dust evolution and planetesimal formation to identify regions of protoplanetary discs that are favourable for the formation of kilometre-sized bodies and the first planetary embryos. We combine semi-analytical models of viscous protoplanetary disc evolution, dust growth and drift including backreaction of the dust particles on the gas, and planetesimal formation via the streaming instability into one numerical code. We investigate how planetesimal formation is affected by the mass of the protoplanetary disc, its initial dust content, and the stickiness of dust aggregates. We find that the dust growth and drift leads to a global redistribution of solids. The pile-up of pebbles in the inner disc provides local conditions where the streaming instability is effective. Planetesimals form in an annulus with its inner edge lying between 0.3 AU and 1 AU and its width ranging from 0.3 AU to 3 AU. The resulting surface density of planetesimals follows a radial profile that is much steeper than the initial disc profile. These results support formation of terrestrial planets in the solar system from a narrow annulus of planetesimals, which reproduces their peculiar mass ratios.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1f93d4bf170d0e46a58affe53fc32b4fdb4b4def

How researchers see this paper

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. J. Dra̧żkowska
2. Y. Alibert
3. Anders Johansen
4. A. Izidoro
5. D. Schoonenberg
6. C. Ormel
7. S. Raymond
8. D. Carrera

In Instrumentation

1. Y. Alibert
2. J. Dra̧żkowska
3. Anders Johansen
4. Chao-Chin Yang
5. S. Raymond
6. A. Izidoro
7. D. Carrera
8. C. Ormel

Citations in the corpus

• Origin of water in the inner Solar System: Planetesimals scattered inward during Jupiter and Saturn's rapid gas accretion (2017, background): “One model of dust drifting in evolving planet-forming disks found a pileup capable of producing planetesimals in a narrow region near 1 AU (Dra̧żkowska et al., 2016).”
• Planetesimal formation starts at the snow line (2017, methodology): “We waive the description of further details of this model as they are thoroughly outlined in the original work as well as in our previous paper (Dra̧żkowska et al. 2016).”
• Planetesimal formation near the snowline: in or out? (2017, background): “1 Dra̧żkowska et al. (2016) argue that growth and radial drift can lead to pile-ups in the inner disk, where streaming instability may then be triggered.”
• Concentrating small particles in protoplanetary disks through the streaming instability (2016, background): “Some interesting possibilities include photo-evaporation of the gaseous disk (Carrera et al. 2017), radial pile-up of solids (Dra̧żkowska et al. 2016; Gonzalez et al. 2017), and ice condensation and sublimation (Ros & Johansen 2013; Ida & Guillot 2016; Schoonenberg & Ormel 2017).”