Imprint of planet formation in the deep interior of the Sun

Abstract

Stars grow by accreting gas that has an evolving composition owing to the growth and inward drift of dust (pebble wave), the formation of planetesimals and planets, and the selective removal of hydrogen and helium by disk winds. We investigated how the formation of the Solar System may have affected the composition and structure of the Sun, and whether it plays any role in solving the solar abundance problem. We simulated the evolution of the Sun from the protostellar phase to the present age and attempted to reproduce spectroscopic and helioseismic constraints. We performed chi-squared tests to optimize our input parameters. We confirmed that, for realistic models, planet formation occurs when the solar convective zone is still massive; thus, the overall changes due to planet formation are too small to significantly improve the chi-square fits. We found that solar models with up-to-date abundances require an opacity increase of 12% to 18% centered at $T=10^{6.4}$ K to reproduce the available observational constraints. This is slightly higher than, but is qualitatively in good agreement with, recent measurements of higher iron opacities. These models result in better fits to the observations than those using old abundances; therefore, they are a promising solution to the solar abundance problem. Using these improved models, we found that planet formation processes leave a small imprint in the solar core, whose metallicity is enhanced by up to 5%. This result can be tested by accurately measuring the solar neutrino flux. In the improved models, the protosolar molecular cloud core is characterized by a primordial metallicity in the range 0.0127-0.0157 and a helium mass fraction in the range 0.268-0.274. (abridged)

Accepted for publication in A&A. 24 pages, 17 figures

References in corpus (29)

• The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
• Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA)
• Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA): Pulsating Variable Stars, Rotation, Convective Boundaries, and Energy Conservation
• The chemical make-up of the Sun: A 2020 vision
• A new Generation of Standard Solar Models
• Experimental evidence of neutrinos produced in the CNO fusion cycle in the Sun
• Dust masses of young disks: constraining the initial solid reservoir for planet formation
• Fresh insights on the structure of the solar core
• The Impact of Dust Evolution and Photoevaporation on Disk Dispersal
• Global Seismology of the Sun
• On the opacity change required to compensate for the revised solar composition
• Episodic accretion: the interplay of infall and disc instabilities
• Growth and migration of solids in evolving protostellar disks I: Methods and Analytical tests
• Evidence for a Dichotomy in the Interior Structures of Jupiter and Saturn from Helium Phase Separation
• Revisiting the pre-main-sequence evolution of stars I. Importance of accretion efficiency and deuterium abundance
• Fingerprints of giant planets in the composition of solar twins
• Jupiter's formation in the vicinity of the amorphous ice snowline
• On the filtering and processing of dust by planetesimals 1. Derivation of collision probabilities for non-drifting planetesimals
• Constraints on the opacity profile of the sun from helioseismic observables and solar neutrino flux measurements
• Solar Elemental Abundances
• Calibrating Core Overshooting Parameters With Two-dimensional Hydrodynamical Simulations
• Gravitoviscous protoplanetary disks with a dust component. III. Evolution of gas, dust, and pebbles
• Dust clearing by radial drift in evolving protoplanetary discs
• On Stellar Evolution In A Neutrino Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram
• Pebble accretion in class 0/I YSOs as a possible pathway for early planet formation
• Rotating Solar Models with Low Metal Abundances as Good as Those with High Metal Abundances
• Standard solar models: a perspective from updated solar neutrino fluxes and the gravity-mode period spacing
• The solar abundance problem and eMSTOs in clusters
• History of the Solar Nebula from Meteorite Paleomagnetism

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Higher metal abundances do not solve the solar problem
• Evidence of a signature of planet formation processes from solar neutrino fluxes
• An Expanded Set of Los Alamos OPLIB Tables in MESA: Type-1 Rosseland-mean Opacities and Solar Models
• Constraints on the properties of macroscopic transport in the Sun from combined lithium and beryllium depletion
• Helioseismic inference of the solar radiative opacity
• The Pre-main Sequence: Challenges and Prospects for Asteroseismology
• Local heating due to convective overshooting and the solar modelling problem
• Using Molecular Lines to Determine Carbon and Nitrogen Abundances in the Atmospheres of Cool Stars
• Solar Models and Astrophysical S-factors Constrained by Helioseismic Results and Updated Neutrino Fluxes
• Solar models with protosolar accretion and turbulent mixing
• The impact of the transport of chemicals and electronic screening on helioseismic and neutrino observations in solar models
• Using Lithium and Beryllium to Study Structure and Evolution of Rotating Stars
• Investigating the impact of Solar Fusion III reaction rates on helioseismic constraints and solar neutrino fluxes
• A data-driven estimate of the protosolar helium mass fraction