Gas Giants

Dust Recycling and Icy Volatile Delivery (DRIVE): A Novel Method of Volatile Enrichment in Cold Giant Planets

By Keith Cowing

Status Report

astro-ph.EP

November 13, 2025

Filed under astro-ph.EP, astrochemistry, astrogeology, atmosphere, CO snowline, exoplanet, gas giant, Interstellar, Protoplanetary Disk

Dust Recycling and Icy Volatile Delivery (DRIVE): A Novel Method of Volatile Enrichment in Cold Giant Planets — Azimuthally averaged gas density (left) and gas radial velocity relative to the planet (right) for our FARGO3D disk model containing a Jupiter mass planet at 75 au. The CO sublimation surface at 30 K recovered from our RADMC-3D model is indicated in both panels by the red dashed line. The region near the embedded planet is heated from a combination of accretion heating onto the planet, disk viscous heating, and radiative heating from the star, resulting in higher temperatures at the midplane in the gap. Gas advection relative to the local sound speed is also indicated by white arrows. Gas advection is primarily outward along the midplane near the planet, with significant vertical flows away from the midplane at the gap edge and in the pressure bump at 100 au. — astro-ph.EP

Giant planet atmospheres are thought to reflect the gas phase composition of the disk when and where they formed.

However, these atmospheres may also be polluted via solid accretion or ice sublimation in the disk. Here, we propose a novel mechanism for enriching the atmospheres of these giant planets with volatiles via pebble drift, fragmentation, and ice sublimation.

We use a combination of 3D hydrodynamic simulations, radiative transfer, and particle tracking to follow the trajectories and resulting temperatures of solids in a disk containing an embedded planet forming outside the CO snowline.

We show that small dust can become entrained in the meridional flows created by the giant planet and advected above the disk midplane where temperatures are well above the sublimation temperature of CO. This transport of small grains occurs over 10 kyr timescales, with individual micron-sized grains cycling between the midplane and surface of the disk multiple times throughout the planetary accretion stage.

We find that this stirring of dust results in sublimation of CO gas above the snow surface in the dust trap created exterior to the giant planet, leading to super-solar CO abundances in the pressure bump.

This mechanism of Dust Recycling and Icy Volatile Enrichment in cold giant planets, which we call the DRIVE effect, may explain enhanced metallicities of both wide separation exoplanets as well as Jupiter in our own Solar System.

Eric R. Van Clepper, Felipe Alarcón, Edwin Bergin, Fred J. Ciesla

Comments: 15 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in ApJL
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2511.07590 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2511.07590v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.07590
Focus to learn more
Submission history
From: Eric Van Clepper
[v1] Mon, 10 Nov 2025 20:03:24 UTC (1,286 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.07590
Astrobiology, Astrogeology, astrochemistry,

Keith Cowing

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻

Follow on Twitter