Related papers: The Effect of Inefficient Accretion on Planetary D…
The chemical compositions of Earth's core and mantle provide insight into the processes that led to their formation. N-body simulations, on the other hand, generally do not contain chemical information, and seek to only reproduce the masses…
Protoplanets develop via collisions between planetesimals and planetary embryos in the final assembly stage of planet formation. The efficiency of the planet formation can be defined by the mass ratio between formed protoplanets and the…
In the late stage of terrestrial planet formation, planets are predicted to undergo pairwise collisions known as giant impacts. Here we present a high-resolution database of giant impacts for differentiated colliding bodies of iron-silicate…
Of the solar system's four terrestrial planets, the origin of Mercury is perhaps the most mysterious. Modern numerical simulations designed to model the dynamics of terrestrial planet formation systematically fail to replicate Mercury;…
The formation of a solar system is believed to have followed a multi-stage process around a protostar. Whipple first noted that planetesimal growth by particle agglomeration is strongly influenced by gas drag; there is a "bottleneck" at the…
In the standard scenario of planet formation, terrestrial planets and the cores of the giant planets are formed by accretion of planetesimals. As planetary embryos grow the planetesimal velocity dispersion increases due to gravitational…
Constraining planet formation models based on the observed exoplanet population requires generating large samples of synthetic planetary systems, which can be computationally prohibitive. A significant bottleneck is simulating the giant…
During planet formation, numerous small impacting bodies result in cratering impacts on large target bodies. A fraction of the target surface is eroded, while a fraction of the impactor material accretes onto the surface. These fractions…
The Earth appears non-chondritic in its abundances of refractory lithophile elements, posing a significant problem for our understanding of its formation and evolution. It has been suggested that this non-chondritic composition may be…
We describe the growth of gas giant planets in the core accretion scenario. The core growth is not modeled as a gradual accretion of planetesimals but as episodic impacts of large mass ratios, i.e. we study impacts of 0.02 - 1 Earth masses…
During the formation of rocky planets, the surface environments of growing protoplanets were dramatically different from those of present-day planets. The release of gravitational energy during accretion would have maintained a molten…
The origins of Uranus and Neptune are not fully understood. Their inclined rotation axes -- obliquities -- suggest that they experienced giant impacts during their formation histories. Simulations modeling their accretion from giant impacts…
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…
Accretion is the dominant contribution to the cosmic massive black hole density in the Universe today. Yet, modelling it in cosmological simulations is challenging due to the dynamic range involved, as well as the theoretical uncertainties…
We present the results of planet formation N-body simulations based on a comprehensive physical model that includes planetary mass growth through mutual embryo collisions and planetesimal/boulder accretion, viscous disc evolution, planetary…
We investigate the melt production of planetary impacts as a function of planet size ($R/R_\mathrm{Earth}$=0.1-1.5), impactor size ($L$=1-1000 km), and core size ratio ($R_\mathrm{core}/R$=0.2-0.8) using a combination of parameterized…
Terrestrial planets are thought to be the result of a vast number of gravitational interactions and collisions between smaller bodies. We use numerical simulations to show that practically identical initial conditions result in a wide array…
We present results from a suite of N-body simulations that follow the accretion history of the terrestrial planets using a new parallel treecode that we have developed. We initially place 2000 equal size planetesimals between 0.5--4.0 AU…
Observed high multiplicity planetary systems are often tightly packed. Numerical studies indicate that such systems are susceptible to dynamical instabilities. Dynamical instabilities in close-in tightly packed systems, similar to those…
Rocky planets both in and outside of our solar system are observed to have a range of core-mass fractions (CMFs). Imperfect collisions can preferentially strip mantle material from a planet, changing its CMF, and are therefore thought to be…