Episodic planetesimal disruptions triggered by dissipation of gas disk

Abstract

Catastrophic disruptions of planetesimals occur in high-velocity collisions. Radioisotope dating of planetesimal disruption events recorded in meteorites confirms frequent catastrophic collisions in the first 10 Myr of the Solar System, reflecting a violent environment of the time. However, the nebula gas can damp the eccentricity of planetesimals and suppress the frequency of planetesimal collisions. Strong dynamical mechanisms that excited the protoplanetary disk are required. Here we show that the sweeping secular resonances of Jupiter and Saturn induced by the nebular gas dissipation, together with the mean motion resonances of Jupiter, can trigger a large number of catastrophic collisions, which occur episodically when the secular resonances are at 2-3 astronomical units and continue thereafter. After the gas dissipation completes, catastrophic collisions decrease in frequency, with scattering by planetary embryos becoming the major driving force of the collisions. Our results suggest that the violent environment excited by secular and mean motion resonances can be ubiquitous in protoplanetary disks during nebula dissipation.

arXiv comment24 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Nature Communications

References in corpus (27)

• A low mass for Mars from Jupiter's early gas-driven migration
• Collisions between Gravity-Dominated Bodies: 2. The Diversity of Impact Outcomes during the End Stage of Planet Formation
• Collisions Between Gravity-Dominated Bodies: 1. Outcome Regimes and Scaling Laws
• High-resolution simulations of the final assembly of Earth-like planets 1: terrestrial accretion and dynamics
• Origin of water in the inner Solar System: Planetesimals scattered inward during Jupiter and Saturn's rapid gas accretion
• Toward a Deterministic Model of Planetary Formation VI: Dynamical Interaction and Coagulation of Multiple Rocky Embryos and Super-Earth Systems around Solar Type Stars
• Post-Oligarchic Evolution of Protoplanetary Embryos and the Stability of Planetary Systems
• From planetesimals to terrestrial planets: N-body simulations including the effects of nebular gas and giant planets
• Collisional Stripping and Disruption of Super-Earths
• The GENGA Code: Gravitational Encounters in N-body simulations with GPU Acceleration
• Compositional evolution during rocky protoplanet accretion
• Early Solar System instability triggered by dispersal of the gaseous disk
• Planetesimals to Terrestrial Planets: collisional evolution amidst a dissipating gas disk
• The early impact histories of meteorite parent bodies
• Silicate Melting and Vaporization during Rocky Planet Formation
• Collisional stripping of planetary crusts
• Ejection of iron-bearing giant-impact fragments and the dynamical and geochemical influence of the fragment re-accretion
• Growing Mars fast: High-resolution GPU simulations of embryo formation
• Realistic collisional water transport during terrestrial planet formation: Self-consistent modeling by an N-body--SPH hybrid code
• Planetesimal clearing and size-dependent asteroid retention by secular resonance sweeping during the depletion of the solar nebula
• SPH/N-body simulations of small (D = 10 km) asteroidal breakups and improved parametric relations for Monte-Carlo collisional models
• The Role of Giant Impacts in Planet Formation
• Age and genetic relationships among CB, CH and CR chondrites
• The Dissipation of the Solar Nebula Constrained by Impacts and Core Cooling in Planetesimals
• Quantitative estimates of impact induced crustal erosion during accretion and its influence on the Sm/Nd ratio of the Earth
• Chondrule Formation by the Jovian Sweeping Secular Resonance
• The Properties of Planetesimal Collisions under Jupiter's Perturbation and the Application to Chondrule Formation via Impact Jetting