Letter to the Editor

Jupiter’s evolution with primordial composition gradients

¹ Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098 XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: a.vazan@uva.nl; rhelled@physik.uzh.ch; tristan.guillot@oca.eu
² Institute for Computational Science, Center for Theoretical Astrophysics & Cosmology, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstr. 190, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland
³ Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, Bd de l’Observatoire, CS 34229, 06304 Nice Cedex 4, France

Received: 21 December 2017
Accepted: 23 January 2018

Abstract

Recent formation and structure models of Jupiter suggest that the planet can have composition gradients and not be fully convective (adiabatic). This possibility directly affects our understanding of Jupiter’s bulk composition and origin. In this Letter we present Jupiter’s evolution with a primordial structure consisting of a relatively steep heavy-element gradient of 40 M_⊕. We show that for a primordial structure with composition gradients, most of the mixing occurs in the outer part of the gradient during the early evolution (several 10⁷ yr), leading to an adiabatic outer envelope (60% of Jupiter’s mass). We find that the composition gradient in the deep interior persists, suggesting that ~40% of Jupiter’s mass can be non-adiabatic with a higher temperature than the one derived from Jupiter’s atmospheric properties. The region that can potentially develop layered convection in Jupiter today is estimated to be limited to ~10% of the mass.