Astrochemistry

HD 163296 And Its Giant Planets: Creation Of Exo-comets, Interstellar Objects And Transport Of Volatile Material

By Keith Cowing
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astro-ph.EP
March 11, 2025
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HD 163296 And Its Giant Planets: Creation Of Exo-comets, Interstellar Objects And Transport Of Volatile Material
Dynamical excitation of the planetesimal disk at 0.75, 2 and 5 Myr in the four simulated scenarios. Dynamical excitation accounts for the contributions of both eccentricity and inclination and is defined as p e 2 + sin2 (i) (Petit et al. 2001). The colour bar indicates the region in the disk from which the planetesimals originated (in units of au). The dashed grey line at 40 au indicate the division between inner and outer disk. The rectangles in the rightmost panels mark the “fountain” feature we refer to in the main text, i.e. the damping of the orbital eccentricities of the excited planetesimals by aerodynamic drag that creates the implanted planetesimals. The light blue filled circles indicate the location of the four simulated planets in the disk. First row: High Disk Mass – High Planetary Mass; Second row: High Disk Mass – Low Planetary Mass; Third row: Low Disk – High Planetary Mass; Fourth row: Low Disk Mass – Low Planetary Mass — astro-ph.EP

The birth of giant planets in protoplanetary disks is known to alter the structure and evolution of the disk environment, but most of our knowledge focuses on its effects on the observable gas and dust.

The impact on the evolution of the invisible planetesimal population is still limitedly studied, yet mounting evidence from the Solar System shows how the appearance of its giant planets played a key role in shaping the habitability of the terrestrial planets. We investigate the dynamical and collisional transport processes of volatile elements by planetesimals in protoplanetary disks that host young giant planets using the HD163296 system as our case study.

HD163296 is one of the best characterised protoplanetary disks that has been proposed to host at least four giant planets on wide orbits as well as a massive planetesimal disk. The formation of giant planets in the HD163296 system creates a large population of dynamically excited planetesimals, the majority of which originate from beyond the CO snowline. The excited planetesimals are both transported to the inner disk regions and scattered outward beyond the protoplanetary disk and into interstellar space.

Existing solid planets can be enriched in volatile elements to levels comparable or larger than those of the Earth, while giant planets can be enriched to the levels of Jupiter and Saturn. The formation of giant planets on wide orbits impacts the compositional evolution of protoplanetary disks and young planetary bodies on a global scale.

The collisional enrichment of the atmospheres of giant planets can alter or mask the signatures of their formation environments, but can provide independent constraints on the disk mass. Protoplanetary disks with giant planets on wide orbits prove efficient factories of interstellar objects.

D. Polychroni, D. Turrini, S. Ivanovski, F. Marzari, L. Testi, R. Politi, A. Sozzetti, J. M. Trigo-Rodriguez, S. Desidera, M. N. Drozdovskaya, S. Fonte, S. Molinari, L. Naponiello, E. Pacetti, E. Schisano, P. Simonetti, M. Zusi

Comments: 17 pages, 6 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication on A&A
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
Cite as: arXiv:2503.04669 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2503.04669v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2503.04669
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Submission history
From: Danae Polychroni
[v1] Thu, 6 Mar 2025 18:00:59 UTC (16,386 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.04669
Astrobiology,

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) 🖖🏻

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