Related papers: Collisional stripping of planetary crusts
Remnant planetesimals might have played an important role in reducing the orbital eccentricities of the terrestrial planets after their formation via giant impacts. However, the population and the size distribution of remnant planetesimals…
Coagulation theory predicts that micron-sized dust grains grow into pebbles which drift inward towards the star, when they reach sizes of mm-cm. When they cross the orbit of a planet, a fraction of these drifting pebbles will be accreted.…
Collisions between large, similar-sized bodies are believed to shape the final characteristics and composition of terrestrial planets. Their inventories of volatiles such as water, are either delivered or at least significantly modified by…
We introduce a prescription for the luminosity from accreting protostars into smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation, and apply the method to simulations of five primordial minihalos generated from cosmological initial conditions. We…
Observations show a large spread in the luminosities of young protostars, which are frequently explained in the context of episodic accretion. We here test this scenario using numerical simulations following the collapse of a solar mass…
Numerous small bodies inevitably lead to cratering impacts on large planetary bodies during planet formation and evolution. As a consequence of these small impacts, a fraction of the target material escapes from the gravity of the large…
Understanding the collisional behavior of dust aggregates is essential in the context of planet formation. It is known that low-velocity collisions of dust aggregates result in bouncing rather than sticking when the filling factor of…
We investigate mantle stripping giant impacts (GI) between super-Earths with masses between 1 M$_{\oplus}$ and 20 M$_{\oplus}$. We infer new scaling laws for the mass of the largest fragment and its iron mass fraction, as well as updated…
Metals observed in the atmospheres of white dwarfs suggest that many have recently accreted planetary bodies. In some cases, the compositions observed suggest the accretion of material dominantly from the core (or the mantle) of a…
Early dust evolution in protoplanetary disks is dominated by sticking collisions. However, this initial phase of particle growth faces constraints - notably from destructive encounters. To find the maximum particle size achievable, we…
The formation of the Earth's core is a consequence of planetary accretion and processes in the Earth's interior. The mechanical process of planetary differentiation is likely to occur in large, if not global, magma oceans created by the…
Giant impacts dominate the late stages of accretion of rocky planets. They contribute to the heating, melting, and sometimes vaporizing of the bodies involved in the impacts. Due to fractionation during melting and vaporization,…
This paper explores how the stochastic accretion of planetesimals onto white dwarfs would be manifested in observations of their atmospheric pollution. Archival observations of pollution levels for unbiased samples of DA and non-DA white…
We investigate the contraction of accreting protoclusters using an extension of n-body techniques that incorporates the accretional growth of stars from the gaseous reservoir in which they are embedded. Following on from Monte Carlo studies…
Linking atmospheric measurements to the bulk planetary composition and ultimately the planetary origin is a key objective in planetary science. In this work, we identify the cases in which the atmospheric composition represents the bulk…
Our knowledge of the strengths of small bodies in the Solar System is limited by our poor understanding of their internal structures, and this, in turn, clouds our understanding of the formation and evolution of these bodies. Observations…
Modeling the formation of the ice giants Uranus and Neptune is a long-lasting problem in planetary science. Due to gas-drag, collisional damping, and resonant shepherding, the planetary embryos repel the planetesimals away from their reach…
(abridged) When preplanetary bodies reach proportions of ~1 km or larger in size, their accretion rate is enhanced due to gravitational focusing (GF). We have developed a new numerical model to calculate the collisional evolution of the…
The primary epoch of planetary accretion concludes with giant impacts - highly energetic collisions between proto-planets that can play a key role in shaping a planet's inventory of volatile elements. Previous work has shown that single…
The key aspect determining the post-formation luminosity of gas giants has long been considered to be the energetics of the accretion shock at the planetary surface. We use 1D radiation-hydrodynamical simulations to study the radiative loss…