Collisions that induce melting and vaporization can have a substantial effect on the thermal and geochemical evolution of planets. However, the thermodynamics of major minerals are not well known at the extreme conditions attained during planet formation. We obtained new data at the Sandia Z Machine and use published thermodynamic data for the major mineral forsterite (Mg$_2$SiO$_4$) to calculate the specific entropy in the liquid region of the principal Hugoniot. We use our calculated specific entropy of shocked forsterite, and revised entropies for shocked silica, to determine the critical impact velocities for melting or vaporization upon decompression from the shocked state to 1 bar and the triple points, which are near the pressures of the solar nebula. We also demonstrate the importance of the initial temperature on the criteria for vaporization. Applying these results to $N$-body simulations of terrestrial planet formation, we find that up to 20 to 40% of the total system mass is processed through collisions with velocities that exceed the criteria for incipient vaporization at the triple point. Vaporizing collisions between small bodies are an important component of terrestrial planet formation.
Currently, there are about 3 dozen known super-Earth (M < 10 MEarth), of which 8 are transiting planets suitable for atmospheric follow-up observations. Some of the planets are exposed to extreme temperatures as they orbit close to their host stars, e.g., CoRot-7b, and all of these planets have equilibrium temperatures significantly hotter than the Earth. Such planets can develop atmospheres through (partial) vaporization of their crustal and/or mantle silicates. We investigated the chemical equilibrium composition of such heated systems from 500 - 4000 K and total pressures from 10-6 to 10+2 …
Several pieces of evidence suggest that silicate grains in primitive meteorites are not interstellar grains but condensates formed in the early solar system. Moreover, the size distribution of matrix grains in chondrites implies that these condensates might be formed as nanometer-sized grains. Therefore, we propose a novel scenario for rocky planetesimal formation in which nanometer-sized silicate grains are produced by evaporation and recondensation events in early solar nebula, and rocky planetesimals are formed via aggregation of these nanograins. We reveal that silicate nanograins can grow…
Extensive experimental studies show all major rocky elements (Si, Mg, Fe, Ni, Ca, Al, Na, K) dissolve in steam to a greater or lesser extent. We use these results to compute chemical equilibrium abundances of rocky element-bearing gases in steam atmospheres equilibrated with silicate magma oceans. Rocky elements partition into steam atmospheres as volatile hydroxide gases and via reaction with HF or HCl as volatile halide gases in much larger amounts than expected from their vapor pressures over volatile-free solid or molten rock at the same temperature. We compute the extent of fractional vap…
The "liquid water habitable zone" (HZ) concept is predicated on the ability of the silicate weathering feedback to stabilize climate across a wide range of instellations. However, representations of silicate weathering used in current estimates of the effective outer edge of the HZ do not account for the thermodynamic limit on concentration of weathering products in runoff set by clay precipitation, nor for the energetic limit on precipitation set by planetary instellation. We find that when the thermodynamic limit is included in an idealized coupled climate/weathering model, steady-state plan…
The effect of protoplanetary differentiation on the fate of life essential volatiles like nitrogen and carbon and its subsequent effect on the dynamics of planetary growth is unknown. Because the dissolution of nitrogen in magma oceans depends on its partial pressure and oxygen fugacity, it is an ideal proxy to track volatile redistribution in protoplanets as a function of their sizes and growth zones. Using high pressure and high temperature experiments in graphite undersaturated conditions, here we show that the iron loving character of nitrogen is an order of magnitude higher than previous …
The poor stickiness of silicate dust grains is a major obstacle to the formation of rocky planetesimals. In this study, we examine the possibility that silicate grains with an organic mantle, which we call Organic-Mantled Grains (OMGs), form planetesimals through direct coagulation. Organic mantles are commonly found in interplanetary dust particles, and laboratory experiments show that they are softer than silicates, in particular in warm environments. This, combined with the theory of particle adhesion, implies that OMGs are stickier than bare silicate grains. Because organic mantles can sur…
Carbon-enriched rocky exoplanets have been proposed around dwarf stars as well as around binary stars, white dwarfs and pulsars. However, the mineralogical make up of such planets is poorly constrained. We performed high-pressure high-temperature laboratory experiments ($P$ = 1$-$2 GPa, $T$ = 1523$-$1823 K) on carbon-enriched chemical mixtures to investigate the deep interiors of Pluto- to Mars-size planets the upper mantles of larger planets. Our results show that these exoplanets, when fully-differentiated, comprise a metallic core, a silicate mantle and a graphite layer on top of the silica…
We provide estimates of atmospheric pressure and surface composition on short-period rocky exoplanets with dayside magma pools and silicate vapor atmospheres. Atmospheric pressure tends toward vapor-pressure equilibrium with surface magma, and magma-surface composition is set by the competing effects of fractional vaporization and surface-interior exchange. We use basic models to show how surface-interior exchange is controlled by the planet's temperature, mass, and initial composition. We assume that mantle rock undergoes bulk melting to form the magma pool, and that winds flow radially away …
It is important to clarify where and when rocky and icy planetesimals are formed in a viscously evolving disk. We wish to understand how local runaway pile-up of solids occurs inside or outside the snow line. We assume an icy pebble contains micron-sized silicate grains that are uniformly mixed with ice and are released during the ice sublimation. Using a local one-dimensional code, we solve the radial drift and the turbulent diffusion of solids and the water vapor, taking account of their sublimation/condensation around the snow line. We systematically investigate effects of back-reactions of…
The Kepler Mission, combined with ground based radial velocity (RV) follow-up and dynamical analyses of transit timing variations, has revolutionized the observational constraints on sub-Neptune-size planet compositions. The results of an extensive Kepler follow-up program including multiple Doppler measurements for 22 planet-hosting stars more than doubles the population of sub-Neptune-sized transiting planets that have RV mass constraints. This unprecedentedly large and homogeneous sample of planets with both mass and radius constraints opens the possibility of a statistical study of the und…
We investigate spectra of airless rocky exoplanets with a theoretical framework that self-consistently treats reflection and thermal emission. We find that a silicate surface on an exoplanet is spectroscopically detectable via prominent Si-O features in the thermal emission bands of 7 - 13 μm and 15 - 25 μm. The variation of brightness temperature due to the silicate features can be up to 20 K for an airless Earth analog, and the silicate features are wide enough to be distinguished from atmospheric features with relatively high-resolution spectra. The surface characterization thus provides a …
Terrestrial planets in the solar system, such as the Earth, are oxygen-rich, with silicates and iron being the most common minerals in their interiors. However, the true chemical diversity of rocky planets orbiting other stars is yet unknown. Mass and radius measurements are used to constrain the interior compositions of super-Earths (exoplanets with masses of 1 - 10 Earth masses), and are typically interpreted with planetary interior models that assume Earth-centric oxygen-rich compositions. Using such models, the super-Earth 55 Cancri e (mass of 8 Earth masses, radius of 2 Earth radii) has b…
The geology of Earth and super-Earth sized planets will, in many cases, only be observable via their atmospheres. Here, we investigate secondary volcanic atmospheres as a key base case of how atmospheres may reflect planetary geochemistry. We couple volcanic outgassing with atmospheric chemistry models to simulate the growth of C-O-H-S-N atmospheres in thermochemical equilibrium, focusing on what information about a planet's mantle fO$_2$ and bulk silicate H/C ratio could be determined by atmospheric observation. 800K volcanic atmospheres develop distinct compositional groups as the mantle fO$…
Context: The formation of rocky planetesimals is a long-standing problem in planet formation theory. One of the possibilities is that it results from gravitational instability as a result of pile-up of small silicate dust particles released from sublimating icy pebbles that pass the snow line. Aims: We want to understand and quantify the role of the water snow line for the formation of rock-rich and ice-rich planetesimals. In this paper, we focus on the formation of rock-rich planetesimals. A companion paper examines the combined formation of both rock-rich and ice-rich planetesimals. Methods:…
This paper outlines a simple approach to evaluate the atmospheric composition of hot rocky planets by assuming different types of planetary composition and using corresponding model calculations. To explore hot atmospheres above 1000 K, we model the vaporization of silicate magma and estimate the range of atmospheric compositions according to the planet's radius and semi-major axis for the Kepler February 2011 data release. Our results show 5 atmospheric types for hot, rocky super-Earth atmospheres, strongly dependent on the initial composition and the planet's distance to the star. We provide…
The long-term carbon cycle is vital for maintaining liquid water oceans on rocky planets due to the negative climate feedbacks involved in silicate weathering. Plate tectonics plays a crucial role in driving the long-term carbon cycle because it is responsible for CO$_2$ degassing at ridges and arcs, the return of CO$_2$ to the mantle through subduction, and supplying fresh, weatherable rock to the surface via uplift and orogeny. However, the presence of plate tectonics itself may depend on climate according to recent geodynamical studies showing that cool surface temperatures are important fo…
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 explained by collisional erosion of differentiated planetesimals of originally chondritic composition. In this work, we present N-body simulations of terrestrial planet formation that track the growth of planetary embryos from planetesimals. We simulate evolution through the runaway and oligarchic growth phases under the Grand Tack model and in the absence of gia…
Volatile depletion in rocky planets as a chemical fingerprint of hybrid accretion
University of Copenhagen（哥本哈根大学）；ETH Zürich（苏黎世联邦理工学院）；University of Alabama（阿拉巴马大学）；University of Nevada, Las Vegas（内华达大学拉斯维加斯分校）；University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学）
The thermal evolution of rocky planets on geological timescales (Gyr) depends on the heat input from the long-lived radiogenic elements potassium, thorium, and uranium. Concentrations of the latter two in rocky planet mantles are likely to vary by up to an order of magnitude between different planetary systems because Th and U, like other heavy r-process elements, are produced by rare stellar processes. Here we discuss the effects of these variations on the thermal evolution of an Earth-size planet, using a 1D parameterized convection model. Assuming Th and U abundances consistent with geochem…
The formation of super-Earths, the most abundant planets in the Galaxy, remains elusive. These planets have masses that typically exceed that of the Earth by a factor of a few; appear to be predominantly rocky, although often surrounded by H/He atmospheres; and frequently occur in multiples. Moreover, planets that encircle the same star tend to have similar masses and radii, whereas those belonging to different systems exhibit remarkable overall diversity. Here, we advance a theoretical picture for rocky planet formation that satisfies the aforementioned constraints: building upon recent work …
Terrestrial planets, with silicate mantles and metallic cores, are likely to obtain water and carbon compounds during accretion. Here I examine the conditions that allow early formation of a surface water ocean (simultaneous with cooling to clement surface conditions), and the timeline of degassing the planetary interior into the atmosphere. The greatest fraction of a planet's initial volatile budget is degassed into the atmosphere during the end of magma ocean solidification, leaving only a small fraction of the original volatiles to be released into the atmosphere through later volcanism. Ro…
Life on Earth emerged at the interface of the geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. This setting serves as our basis for how biological systems originate on rocky planets. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that the chemical nature of a rocky planet is ultimately a product of galactic chemical evolution. Elemental abundances of the major rock-forming elements can be different for different stars and planets formed at different times in galactic history. These differences mean that we cannot expect small rocky exoplanets to be just like Earth. Furthermore, age of the system dictates starti…
Mercury's high uncompressed mass density suggests that the planet is largely composed of iron, either bound within metal (mainly Fe-Ni), or iron sulfide. Recent results from the MESSENGER mission to Mercury imply a low temperature history of the planet which questions the standard formation models of impact mantle stripping or evaporation to explain the high metal content. Like Mercury, the two smallest extrasolar rocky planets with mass and size determination, CoRoT-7b and Kepler-10b, were found to be of high density. As they orbit close to their host stars this indicates that iron rich inner…
Planetesimal formation is one of the most important unsolved problems in planet formation theory. In particular, rocky planetesimal formation is difficult because silicate dust grains are easily broken when they collide. Recently, it has been proposed that they can grow as porous aggregates when their monomer radius is smaller than $\sim$ 10 nm, which can also avoid the radial drift toward the central star. However, the stability of a layer composed of such porous silicate dust aggregates has not been investigated. Therefore, we investigate the gravitational instability of this dust layer. To …
Many stars of different spectral types with planets in the habitable zone are known to emit flares. Until now, studies that address the long-term impact of stellar flares and associated Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) assumed that the planet's interior remains unaffected by interplanetary CMEs, only considering the effect of plasma/UV interactions on the atmosphere of planets. Here, we show that the magnetic flux carried by flare-associated CMEs results in planetary interior heating by Ohmic dissipation and leads to a variety of interior--exterior interactions. We construct a physical model to s…
Volatile molecules containing hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen are key components of planetary atmospheres. In the pebble accretion model for rocky planet formation, these volatile species are accreted during the main planetary formation phase. For this study, we modelled the partitioning of volatiles within a growing planet and the outgassing to the surface. The core stores more than 90\% of the hydrogen and carbon budgets of Earth for realistic values of the partition coefficients of H and C between metal and silicate melts. The magma oceans of Earth and Venus are sufficiently deep to undergo …
Understanding the origin of life-essential volatiles like N in the Solar System and beyond is critical to evaluate the potential habitability of rocky planets. Whether the inner Solar System planets accreted these volatiles from their inception or had an exogenous delivery from the outer Solar System is, however, not well understood. Using previously published data of nucleosynthetic anomalies of Ni, Mo, W and Ru in iron meteorites along with their 15N-14N ratios, here we show that the earliest formed protoplanets in the inner and outer protoplanetary disk accreted isotopically distinct N. Whi…
A sufficient amount of water is required at the surface to develop water oceans. A significant fraction of water, however, remains in the mantle during magma ocean solidification, and thus the existence of water oceans is not guaranteed even for exoplanets located in the habitable zone. To discuss the likelihood of ocean formation, we built two models to predict the rate of mantle degassing during the magma ocean stage and the subsequent solid-state convection stage. We find that planets with low H$_2$O/CO$_2$ ratios would not have a sufficient amount of surface water to develop water oceans i…
The formation of Uranus' regular moons has been suggested to be linked to the origin of its enormous spin axial tilt (~98^o). A giant impact between proto-Uranus and a 2-3 M_Earth impactor could lead to a large tilt and to the formation of an impact generated disc, where prograde and circular satellites are accreted. The most intriguing features of the current regular Uranian satellite system is that it possesses a positive trend in the mass-distance distribution and likely also in the bulk density, implying that viscous spreading of the disc after the giant impact plays a crucial role in shap…
Ascertaining rocky exoplanets dynamic evolution requires better understanding of key internal thermophysical processes that shaped their geological surfaces, heat fluxes, volatiles and atmospheric content. New high-pressure experiments on iron and silicates compressible, melting and transport properties are providing new constraints that demand reassessments of super-Earths thermal and magnetic evolution models. We examine the interior structure, temperature distribution, thermal states and dynamo action of these planets with masses ranging from 1-10 ME. We show that the shallow adiabaticity o…
We present a series of papers dedicated to modelling the accretion and differentiation of rocky planets that form by pebble accretion within the lifetime of the protoplanetary disc. In this first paper, we focus on how the accreted ice determines the distribution of iron between the mantle (oxidized FeO and FeO$_{1.5}$) and the core (metallic Fe and FeS). We find that an initial primitive composition of ice-rich material leads, upon heating by the decay of $^{26}$Al, to extensive water flow and the formation of clay minerals inside planetesimals. Metallic iron dissolves in liquid water and pre…
We explore the heating and differentiation of rocky planets that grow by rapid pebble accretion. Our terrestrial planets grow outside of the ice line and initially accrete 28\% water ice by mass. The accretion of water stops after the protoplanet reaches a mass of $0.01\,M_{\rm E}$ where the gas envelope becomes hot enough to sublimate the ice and transport the vapour back to the protoplanetary disc by recycling flows. The energy released by the decay of $^{26}$Al melts the accreted ice to form clay (phyllosilicates), oxidized iron (FeO), and a water surface layer with ten times the mass of Ea…
The habitable zone is the region around a star where standing bodies of liquid water can be stable on a planetary surface. Its width is often assumed to be dictated by the efficiency of the carbonate-silicate cycle, which has maintained habitable surface conditions on our planet for billions of years. This cycle may be inhibited by surface condensation of significant amounts of $CO_{\mathrm{2}}$ ice, which is likely to occur on distant planets containing high enough levels of atmospheric $CO_{\mathrm{2}}$. Such a process could permanently trap $CO_{\mathrm{2}}$ ice within the planet, threateni…
In this review we discuss all the relevant solar/stellar radiation and plasma parameters and processes that act together in the formation and modification of atmospheres and exospheres that consist of surface-related minerals. Magma ocean degassed silicate atmospheres or thin gaseous envelopes from planetary building blocks, airless bodies in the inner Solar System, and close-in magmatic rocky exoplanets such as CoRot-7b, HD219134b and 55 Cnc e are addressed. The depletion and fractionation of elements from planetary embryos, which act as the building blocks for protoplanets are also discussed…
Kepler-20 is a solar-type star (V = 12.5) hosting a compact system of five transiting planets, all packed within the orbital distance of Mercury in our own Solar System. A transition from rocky to gaseous planets with a planetary transition radius of ~1.6 REarth has recently been proposed by several publications in the literature (Rogers 2015;Weiss & Marcy 2014). Kepler-20b (Rp ~ 1.9 REarth) has a size beyond this transition radius, however previous mass measurements were not sufficiently precise to allow definite conclusions to be drawn regarding its composition. We present new mass measureme…
TOI-561 is a galactic thick disk star hosting an ultra-short period (0.45 day orbit) planet with a radius of 1.37 R$_{\oplus}$, making it one of the most metal-poor ([Fe/H] = -0.41) and oldest ($\sim$10 Gyr) sites where an Earth-sized planet has been found. We present new simultaneous radial velocity measurements (RVs) from Gemini-N/MAROON-X and Keck/HIRES, which we combined with literature RVs to derive a mass of M$_{b}$=2.24 $\pm$ 0.20 M$_{\oplus}$. We also used two new Sectors of TESS photometry to improve the radius determination, finding R$_{b}$=$1.37 \pm 0.04 R_\oplus$, and confirming th…
Around the snow line, icy pebbles and silicate dust may locally pile-up and form icy and rocky planetesimals via streaming instability and/or gravitational instability. We perform 1D diffusion-advection simulations that include the back-reaction to radial drift and diffusion of icy pebbles and silicate dust, ice sublimation, release of silicate dust, and their recycling through recondensation and sticking onto pebbles outside the snow line. We use a realistic description of the scale height of silicate dust obtained from Ida et al. and that of pebbles including the effects of a Kelvin-Helmholt…
The geophysics of extrasolar planets is a scientific topic often regarded as standing largely beyond the reach of near-term observations. This reality in no way diminishes the central role of geophysical phenomena in shaping planetary outcomes, from formation, to thermal and chemical evolution, to numerous issues of surface and near-surface habitability. We emphasize that for a balanced understanding of extrasolar planets, it is important to look beyond the natural biases of current observing tools, and actively seek unique pathways to understand exoplanet interiors as best as possible during …
We study the formation of rocky planets by dry pebble accretion from self-consistent dust-growth models. In particular, we aim at computing the maximum core mass of a rocky planet that can sustain a thin H-He atmosphere to account for the second peak of the Kepler's size distribution. We simulate planetary growth by pebble accretion inside the ice line. The pebble flux is computed self-consistently from dust growth by solving the advection-diffusion equation for a representative dust size. Dust coagulation, drift, fragmentation and sublimation at the water iceline are included. The disc evolut…
Giant planet migration is an important phenomenon in the evolution of planetary systems. Recent works have shown that giant planet growth and migration can shape the asteroid belt, but these works have not considered interactions between planetesimals. We have calculated the evolution of planetesimal disks, including planetesimal-planetesimal collisions, during gas giant growth and migration. The numbers, locations, and impact velocities of these collisions depend on the specific growth and migration path. We find that giant planet growth alone has little effect on impact velocities, and most …
The bulk chemical composition and interior structure of rocky exoplanets are of fundamental importance to understanding their long-term evolution and potential habitability. Observations of the chemical compositions of the solar system rocky bodies and of other planetary systems have increasingly shown a concordant picture that the chemical composition of rocky planets reflects that of their host stars for refractory elements, whereas this expression breaks down for volatiles. This behavior is explained by devolatilization during planetary formation and early evolution. Here, we apply a devola…
The earliest atmospheres of rocky planets originate from extensive volatile release during magma ocean epochs that occur during assembly of the planet. These establish the initial distribution of the major volatile elements between different chemical reservoirs that subsequently evolve via geological cycles. Current theoretical techniques are limited in exploring the anticipated range of compositional and thermal scenarios of early planetary evolution, even though these are of prime importance to aid astronomical inferences on the environmental context and geological history of extrasolar plan…
