Protostars and Planets VI, Heidelberg, July 15-20, 2013
Poster 2H033
Critical core mass and the abundance of heavy elements
Venturini, Julia (Center for Space and Habitability & Physikalisches Institut, Universität Bern, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland)
Alibert, Yann (Center for Space and Habitability & Physikalisches Institut, Universität Bern, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland)
Benz, Willy (Center for Space and Habitability & Physikalisches Institut, Universität Bern, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland)
Ikoma, Masahiro (Department of Earth and Planetary Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan)
Abstract:
Within the core accretion scenario of planetary formation, simulations performed so far assume that the planetesimals are accreted by protoplanets without
undergoing any physical disruption during their way to the core. This implies that during the growth of a giant planet, all the solids are deposited in the core and do not modify the primordial H-He envelope. In this work, we begin to investigate the physical implications of taking into account the change of
composition of the envelope of proto-giant planets due to the ablation of planetesimals. A series of static internal structure models are run with the
implementation of the free software CEA to compute the equation of state for the polluted envelope, and updated opacities for all ranges of metallicities. We show that a consecuence of incorporating a non-solar metallicity in the envelope of protoplanets is a strong reduction in the critical core mass.
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