Gas Accretion Rates onto a Proto-Gas Giant Planet during the Runaway Gas Accretion Phase

Details Gas Accretion Rates onto a Proto-Gas Giant Planet during the Runaway Gas Accretion Phase Gas Accretion Rates onto a Proto-Gas Giant Planet during the Runaway Gas Accretion Phase

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.4004h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #40.04

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

In situ measurements by spacecrafts revealed that the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn are enriched by heavy elements. Internal-structure modeling suggests that the mass of heavy elements differs among detected transiting extrasolar gas giant planets. The heavy elements may have been brought by planetesimals during a late phase of the runaway gas accretion. Recent simulations of orbital evolution of planetesimals around a growing protoplanet demonstrate that the rate of accretion of planetesimals onto a protoplanet is regulated by the rate of gas accretion. However, the gas accretion rate during the runaway gas accretion phase has not been investigated sufficiently yet. The mass of heavy elements that gas giant planets acquired through planetesimal accretion is still an open question. In this study, we have simulated the growth of a protoplanet embedded in a protoplanetary disk by using a one-dimensional quasi-static model and investigated the gas accretion rate onto the protoplanet. We have examined the effects of changing the equation of state (EOS) for gas, the grain opacity, and the initial core mass on the results. Our results show that the gas accretion rates can be expressed in the form of a power law of planetary mass after the onset of runaway gas accretion. The index of the power law is insensitive to the choices of EOS and initial core masses although the magnitude of the gas accretion rate is dependent on them. We have also found that the grain opacity and the place of the outer edge where the atmosphere is equilibrated with the surrounding disk gas are crucial to determine the power-law index.

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