Collisional Disruption of super-Earths

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics

Scientific paper

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Scientific paper

The late stages of planet formation are dominated by collisions between planetary embryos with masses on the order of one tenth the mass of the Earth in our solar system (e.g., Agnor et al. 1999). The dynamics of this stage determine the final configuration of planets in the system. In the solar system, there is evidence of possible late giant impacts in the histories of both Mercury (Benz et al. 1988, 2007) and the Earth (e.g., Canup 2004). Here we consider high energy collisions (near catastrophic disruption) between planets of initially terrestrial composition with a range of masses into the super-Earth regime. We derive the transition between collisional accretion and erosion for super-Earths, following the method of Stewart and Leinhardt (2009). We identify both a catastrophic disruption regime and grazing impact and bouncing regime, as found by Agnor and Asphaug (2004). In the disruption regime, we derive a scaling law for changing the bulk composition (iron to silicate ratio). We then discuss the observational implications for such missions as Kepler.

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