Terrestrial Planet Formation. I. The Transition from Oligarchic Growth to Chaotic Growth

By S. Kenyon, B. Bromley. 2005

176 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We use a hybrid, multiannulus, n-body-coagulation code to investigate the growth of kilometer-sized planetesimals at 0.4-2 AU around a solar-type star. After a short runaway growth phase, protoplanets with masses of ∼1026 g and larger form throughout the grid. When (1) the mass in these "oligarchs" is roughly comparable to the mass in planetesimals and (2) the surface density in oligarchs exceeds 2-3 g cm-2 at 1 AU, strong dynamical interactions among oligarchs produce a high merger rate, which leads to the formation of several terrestrial planets. In disks with lower surface density, milder interactions produce several lower-mass planets. In all disks, the planet formation timescale is ∼10-100 Myr, similar to estimates derived from the cratering record and radiometric data.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/626b0c36096255180119ee119191335caf8b1650

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Citations in the corpus

Toward Planetesimals: Dense Chondrule Clumps in the Protoplanetary Nebula (2008, background): “Model studies (e.g., Petit et al 2001, Kenyon and Bromley 2004, 2006; Bottke et al 2005; Chambers 2004,2006; Weidenschilling and Cuzzi 2006) suggest that the collisional stage occurred after dispersal of the nebula gas allowed the orbital eccentricities of primitive bodies to grow.”
Atmospheric mass loss during planet formation: The importance of planetesimal impacts (2014, unknown): “…stirring rates of the protoplanets with the damping rates due to dynamical friction by the planetesimal population and numerical simulations find that giant impacts set in when the total mass in protoplanets is comparable to the mass in planetesimals (Goldreich et al. 2004; Kenyon & Bromley 2006).”
Variations on Debris Disks: Icy Planet Formation at 30-150 AU for 1-3 M☉ Main-Sequence Stars (2008, methodology): “Limitations of the Calculations In previous papers, we have described limitations to multiannulus (Bromley & Kenyon 2006; Kenyon & Bromley 2001, 2002a, 2004b, 2005, 2006) and single annulus (Kenyon & Luu 1998,1999) coagulation calculations.”
Building the terrestrial planets: Constrained accretion in the inner Solar System (2009, background): “Giant collisions between planetary embryos begin to occur when the local density of planetesimals and embryos is comparable (Wetherill, 1985; Kenyon and Bromley, 2006).”
A Perspective from Extinct Radionuclides on a Young Stellar Object: The Sun and Its Accretion Disk (2011, background): “The transition from oligarchic growth to chaotic growth occurred when the mass locked up in embryos was comparable with that in planetesimals (Kenyon & Bromley 2006).”
The minimum-mass extrasolar nebula: in situ formation of close-in super-Earths (2012, background): “…predicts that an “oligarchy” composed of closely nested protoplanets eventually destabilizes when the oligarchs viscously stir themselves faster than the underlying disk can cool them by dynamical friction (e.g., Kokubo & Ida 2000; Goldreich et al. 2004; Kenyon & Bromley 2006; Ford & Chiang 2007).”
Populating the asteroid belt from two parent source regions due to the migration of giant planets—“The Grand Tack” (2012, background): “It is in the following 30– 100 Myr that the terrestrial planets finished accreting (Kenyon and Bromley 2006; Kleine et al. 2009; also see Morbidelli et al. 2012), and approximately 400–600 Myr later that the orbits of the giant planets experienced an instability that resulted in the restructuring…”
Constructing the secular architecture of the solar system II: The terrestrial planets (2009, unknown): “According to our best models (Chambers & Wetherill 1998; Agnor et al. 1999; Chambers 2001; Raymond et al. 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007; O’Brien et al. 2006; Kenyon & Bromley 2006), the terrestrial planets formed by collisions among a population of intermediate objects called planetary embryos, with…”
Debris disks as signposts of terrestrial planet formation (2011, methodology): “Within this zone, we adopt initial conditions that are motivated by “chaotic growth” models, of the type summarized by Goldreich et al. (2004) and calculated in detail by Kenyon & Bromley (2006).”
Asteroids Were Born Big (2009, background): “Consequently, the simulations of the second step of the accretion process, that in which collisional coagulation among the planetesimals leads to the formation of planetary embryos and giant planet cores, usually starts from a population of km-sized planetesimals (e.g. Weidenschilling et al., 1997; ”
THE EXOPLANET CENSUS: A GENERAL METHOD APPLIED TO KEPLER (2011, background): “Trends revealed by the data provide powerful constraints on dynamical theories of planet formation (Goldreich et al. 2004; Kenyon & Bromley 2006; Youdin 2010).”
Transience of Hot Dust around Sun-like Stars (2006, background): “Such eccentricities would be expected through stirring either by > 1000 km planetesimals which formed within the belt, or by more massive perturbers which formed outside the belt, both of which can be expected to occur within 10-100 Myr (Kenyon & Bromley 2006).”