Dust accretion onto high-mass planets

Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, Postbus 9513, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: S.Paardekooper@damtp.cam.ac.uk

Received: 31 August 2006
Accepted: 23 October 2006

Abstract

Aims.We study the accretion of dust particles of various sizes onto embedded massive gas giant planets, where we take into account the structure of the gas disk due to the presence of the planet. The accretion rate of solids is important for the structure of giant planets: it determines the growth rate of the solid core that may be present as well as their final enrichment in solids.

Methods.We use the RODEO hydrodynamics solver to solve the flow equations for the gas, together with a particle approach for the dust. The solver for the particles' equations of motion is implicit with respect to the drag force, which allows us to treat the whole dust size spectrum.

Results.We find that dust accretion is limited to the smallest particle sizes. The largest particles get trapped in outer mean-motion resonances with the planet, while particles of intermediate size are pushed away from the orbit of the planet by the density structure in the gas disk. Only particles smaller than approximately may accrete on a planet with the mass of Jupiter. For a ten times less massive planet  . The strongly reduced accretion of dust makes it very hard to enrich a newly formed giant planet in solids.