4.7 Article

Formation of terrestrial planet cores inside giant planet embryos

Journal

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 413, Issue 2, Pages 1462-1478

Publisher

OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2011.18230.x

Keywords

planets and satellites: formation; planet-disc interactions

Funding

  1. STFC
  2. STFC [PP/E00119X/1] Funding Source: UKRI
  3. Science and Technology Facilities Council [PP/E00119X/1] Funding Source: researchfish

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Giant planet embryos are believed to be spawned by gravitational instability in massive extended (R similar to 100 au) protostellar discs. In a recent paper, we have shown that dust can sediment inside the embryos, as argued earlier by Boss in a slightly different model. Here we study numerically the next stage of this process - the formation of a solid core. If conditions are conducive to solid core formation, the centre of the gas cloud goes through the following sequence of phases: (i) becomes grain (and metal) rich; (ii) forms a terrestrial mass solid core via a rapid collapse driven by self-gravity of the grains; (iii) starts to accrete a gaseous atmosphere when the solid core reaches mass of a few to 10 Earth masses. This sequence of events may build either terrestrial planet cores or metal-rich giant planets inside the larger gas reservoir of the giant planet embryo. In a companion letter we argue that tidal and irradiation effects from the parent star should disrupt the outer metal-poor layers of the embryo, releasing nearly 'ready to use' planets. We propose this as an alternative way to build planets.

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