How to make giant planets via pebble accretion

Sofia Savvidou, Bertram Bitsch

Published 2023-09-07Version 1

Planet formation is directly linked to the birthing environment that protoplanetary disks provide. The disk properties determine whether a giant planet will form and how it evolves. The number of exoplanet and disk observations is consistently rising, however, it is not yet possible to directly link these two populations. Therefore, a deep theoretical understanding of how planets form is crucial. We performed numerical simulations of planet formation via pebble and gas accretion, while including migration, in a viscously evolving protoplanetary disk, with dust growing, drifting, and evaporating at the ice lines. In our investigation of the most favorable conditions for giant planet formation, we find that these are high disk masses, early formation, and a large enough disk to host a long-lasting pebble flux. However, small disks with the same mass allow more efficient gas accretion onto planetary cores, leading to more massive gas giants. Given the right conditions, high viscosity leads to more massive cores and it enhances gas accretion. It also causes faster type II migration rates, so the giants have a decreasing final position for increasing viscosity. Intermediate dust fragmentation velocities provide the necessary pebble sizes and radial drift velocities for maximized pebble accretion and pebble flux. An enhanced dust-to-gas ratio can compensate for lower disk masses, but early formation is still crucial. We conclude that there is no specific initial parameter that leads to giant planet formation; rather, it is the outcome of a combination of complementary factors. This also implies that the diversity of the exoplanet systems is the product of the intrinsic diversity of the protoplanetary disks and it is crucial to take advantage of the increasing number and quality of observations to constrain the disk population properties and ultimately devise planet formation theories.