Formation of Terrestrial Planets from Protoplanets

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5400 Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets, 5455 Origin And Evolution

Scientific paper

The final stage of terrestrial planet formation is known as the giant impact stage where lunar-to-Mars-sized protoplanets collide with one another to form planets. We investigate this final assemblage of terrestrial planets from protoplanets using N-body simulations. As initial conditions, we adopt the oligarchic growth model of protoplanets. We systematically change the initial protoplanet system parameters. For each initial condition, we perform more than 20 runs, and from their results we derive the statistical properties of the assembled planets. For the standard disk model, typically two Earth-sized planets form in the terrestrial planet region. We show the dependences of the mass and orbital elements of planets on the initial protoplanet system parameters. The number of planets slowly decreases as the surface density of the initial protoplanets increases, while the mass of individual planets increases almost linearly. We also find that the spin angular velocity of the planets is well expressed by a Gaussian distribution and their obliquity is well expressed by an isotropic distribution. The typical spin angular velocity is given by the critical spin angular velocity for rotational instability under the assumption of perfect accretion in collisions. We also discuss the effect of the accretion condition on the terrestrial planet formation.

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