A New Database Of Giant Impacts Over A Wide Range Of Masses And With Material Strength: A First Analysis Of Outcomes
In the late stage of terrestrial planet formation, planets are predicted to undergo pairwise collisions known as giant impacts.
Here we present a high-resolution database of giant impacts for differentiated colliding bodies of iron-silicate composition, with target masses ranging from 10^-4 M_Earth up to super-Earths (5 M_Earth). We vary impactor-to-target mass ratio, core-mantle (iron-silicate) fraction, impact velocity, and impact angle.
Strength in the form of friction is included in all simulations. We find that due to strength, collisions with bodies smaller than about 2*10^-3 M_Earth can result in irregular shapes, compound core structures, and captured binaries.
We observe that the characteristic escaping velocity of smaller remnants (debris) is approximately half of the impact velocity, significantly faster than currently assumed in N-body simulations of planet formation. Incorporating these results in N-body planet formation studies would provide more realistic debris-debris and debris-planet interactions.
Alexandre Emsenhuber, Erik Asphaug, Saverio Cambioni, Travis S. J. Gabriel, Stephen R. Schwartz, Robert E. Melikyan, C. Adeene Denton
Comments: Accepted for publication in PSJ; Table 2 is available in full in an ancillary file
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2401.17356 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2401.17356v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Alexandre Emsenhuber
[v1] Tue, 30 Jan 2024 19:00:01 UTC (1,518 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.17356
Astrobiology,
