In situ enrichment in heavy elements of hot Jupiters

¹ Département Lagrange, CNRS, Université Côte d’Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, Nice, France
e-mail: alessandro.morbidelli@oca.eu
² Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

Received: 11 May 2023
Accepted: 2 June 2023

Abstract

Context. Radius and mass measurements of short-period giant planets reveal that many of these planets contain a large amount of heavy elements. Although the range of inferred metallicities is broad, planets with more than 100 M_⊕ of heavy elements are not rare. This is in sharp contrast with the expectations of the conventional core-accretion model for the origin of giant planets.

Aims. The proposed explanations for the heavy-element enrichment of giant planets fall short of explaining the most enriched planets. We look for additional processes that can explain the full envelope of inferred enrichments.

Methods. We revisited the dynamics of pebbles and dust in the vicinity of giant planets using analytic estimates and published results on the profile of a gap opened by a giant planet, the radial velocity of the gas with respect to the planet, the Stokes number of particles in the different parts of the disk, and the consequent dust/gas ratio. Although our results are derived in the framework of a viscous α-disk, we also discuss the case of disks driven by angular momentum removal in magnetized winds.

Results. When giant planets are far from the star, dust and pebbles are confined to a pressure bump at the outer edge of the planet-induced gap. When the planets reach the inner part of the disk (r_p ≪ 2 au), dust instead penetrates into the gap together with the gas. The dust/gas ratio can be enhanced by more than an order of magnitude if the radial drift of dust is not impeded farther out by other barriers. Thus, hot planets undergoing runaway gas accretion can swallow a large amount of dust, acquiring ~100 M_⊕ of heavy elements by the time they reach Jupiter masses.

Conclusions. Whereas the gas accreted by giant planets in the outer disk is very dust-poor, that accreted by hot planets can be extremely dust-rich. Thus, provided that a large fraction of the atmosphere of hot Jupiters is accreted in situ, a large amount of dust can be accreted as well. We draw a distinction between this process and pebble accretion (i.e., the capture of dust without the accretion of gas), which is ineffective at small stellocentric radii, even for super-Earths. Giant planets farther out in the disk are extremely effective barriers against the flow of pebbles and dust across their gap. Saturn and Jupiter, after locking into a mutual mean motion resonance and reversing their migration, could have accreted small pebble debris.