Role of Gaseous Giants in the Dynamical Evolution of Terrestrial Planets and Water Delivery in the Habitable Zone

In the present research, we study the effects of a single giant planet in the dynamical evolution of water-rich embryos and planetesimals, located beyond the snow line of systems around Sun-like stars, in order to determine what kind of terrestrial-like planets could be formed in the habitable zone (hereafter HZ) of these systems.

To do this, we carry out N-body simulations of planetary accretion, considering that the gas has been already dissipated from the disk and a single giant planet has been formed beyond the snow line of the system, at 3 au. We find that a giant planet with a value of mass between Saturn-mass and Jupiter-mass, represents a limit from which the amount of water-rich embryos that moves inward from beyond the snow line starts to decrease. From this, our research suggests that giant planets more massive than one Jupiter-mass become efficient dynamical barriers to inward-migrating water-rich embryos.

Moreover, we infer that the number of these embryos that survive in the HZ significantly decreases for systems that host a giant planet more massive than one Jupiter-mass. This result has important consequences concerning the formation of terrestrial-like planets in the HZ with very high water contents and could provide a selection criteria in the search of potentially habitable exoplanets in systems that host a gaseous giant around solar-type stars.

Mariana B. Sánchez, Gonzalo C. de Elía, Luciano A. Darriba
(Submitted on 27 Aug 2018)

Comments: 10 pages, 8 figures
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:1808.08870 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1808.08870v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Mariana Belen Sanchez Miss
[v1] Mon, 27 Aug 2018 14:57:06 GMT (170kb,D)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.08870
Astrobiology