Exoplanets, -moons, -comets

Planet Formation In Chemically Diverse And Evolving Discs — I. Composition Of Planetary Building Blocks

By Keith Cowing

Status Report

astro-ph.EP

June 28, 2025

Filed under astro-ph.EP, astrochemistry, astrogeology, exoplanets, organic chemistry, Planetesimal

Planet Formation In Chemically Diverse And Evolving Discs — I. Composition Of Planetary Building Blocks — Evolutionary tracks of the elemental ratios over 3 Myr across all considered scenarios. Ratios are shown in pairs across four key compositional regions: within the H2O snowline (Region 1, top-left), between the H2O and CO2 snowlines (Region 2, topright), between the CO2 and CH4 snowlines (Region 3, bottom-left), and beyond the CH4 snowline (Region 4, bottom-right). Values represent gas-phase elemental ratios, calculated from total elemental abundances averaged over the radial extent of each region and weighted by the surface density of the gas. The colour bars indicate the four chemical scenarios, with time progressing from lighter to darker shades. The three different markers represent the selected grain sizes and are placed along each track every 200 000 yr. The dark marker on each track denotes 1 Myr. Dashed grey lines highlight regions of the parameter space where pairwise comparisons of the elemental ratios provide constraints on specific scenarios or subsets of scenarios. — astro-ph.EP

Protoplanetary discs are dynamic environments where the interplay between chemical processes and mass transport shapes the composition of gas and dust available for planet formation.

We investigate the combined effects of volatile chemistry – including both gas-phase and surface reactions – viscous gas evolution, and radial dust drift on the composition of planetary building blocks.

We explore scenarios of chemical inheritance and reset under varying ionisation conditions and for various dust grain sizes in the sub-mm regime. We simulate disc evolution using a semi-analytical 1D model that integrates chemical kinetics with gas and dust transport, accounting for viscous heating, turbulent mixing, and refractory organic carbon erosion.

We find that mass transport plays a role in the chemical evolution of even sub-micron grains, especially in discs that have experienced strong heating or are exposed to relatively high levels of ionising radiation. The radial drift of relatively small icy grains can yield significant volatile enrichment in the gas phase within the snowlines, increasing the abundances of key species by up to an order of magnitude.

Early planetesimal formation can lead to volatile depletion in the inner disc on timescales shorter than 0.5 Myr, while the erosion of refractory organic carbon can lead to markedly superstellar gas-phase C/O and C/N ratios. Notably, none of the analysed scenarios reproduce the monotonic radial trend of the gas-phase C/O ratio predicted by early models.

Our results also show that a pairwise comparison of elemental ratios, in the context of the host star’s composition, is key to isolating signatures of different scenarios in specific regions of the disc. We conclude that models of planet formation must concurrently account for the chemical and dynamical evolution of discs, as well as the diversity of their initial chemical and physical conditions.

E. Pacetti, E. Schisano, D. Turrini, C. P. Dullemond, S. Molinari, C. Walsh, S. Fonte, U. Lebreuilly, R. S. Klessen, P. Hennebelle, S. L. Ivanovski, R. Politi, D. Polychroni, P. Simonetti, L. Testi

Comments: 30 pages, 18 figures. Accepted for publication in A&A
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:2506.17399 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2506.17399v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.17399
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Submission history
From: Elenia Pacetti
[v1] Fri, 20 Jun 2025 18:03:05 UTC (19,512 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.17399

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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