Chemistry of planet formation

This thesis explores how the chemical environment in which planets develop influences planet formation. The total solid mass, gas/solid ratio, and specific ice inventory of protoplanetary disks can dramatically alter the planet's formation timescale, core/atmosphere mass ratio, and atmosphere composition. We present the results of three projects that probe the links between solar nebula composition and giant planet formation.; The first project offers evidence that stars with planets exhibit statistically significant silicon and nickel enrichment over the general metal-rich population. To test whether this prediction is compatible with the core accretion theory of planet formation, we construct new numerical simulations of planet formation by core accretion that establish the timescale on which a planet forming at 5 AU reaches rapid gas accretion, trga, as a function of solid surface density sigmasolid: (t rga/1 Myr) = (sigmasolid/25.0 g cm-2) -1.44. This relation enables us to construct Monte Carlo simulations that predict the fraction of star-disk systems that form planets as a function of [Fe/H], [Si/Fe], disk mass, outer disk radius and disk lifetime. Our simulations reproduce both the known planet-metallicity correlation and the planet-silicon correlation reported in this paper. The simulations predict that 15% of Solar-type stars form Jupiter-mass planets, in agreement with 12% predicted from extrapolation of the observed planet frequency-semimajor axis distribution.; Despite the success of our Monte Carlo simulation of the planet-silicon correlation at predicting the properties of extrasolar Jovian planets, there is still no in situ core accretion simulation that can successfully account for the formation of Saturn, Uranus or Neptune within the observed 2-3 Myr lifetimes of protoplanetary disks. Since solid accretion rate is directly proportional to the available planetesimal surface density, one way to speed up planet formation is to take a full inventory of all the solids present in the solar nebula. In Project 2 (Chapter 3) we combine a viscously evolving protostellar disk with a kinetic model of ice formation, which includes not just water but methane, ammonia, CO and 54 minor ices. We use this combined dynamical+chemical simulation to calculate the planetesimal composition and solid surface density in the solar nebula as a function of heliocentric distance and time.; We find three effects that strongly favor giant planet formation: (1) a decretion flow that brings mass from the inner solar nebula to the giant planet-forming region, (2) recent lab results (Collings et al. 2004) showing that the ammonia and water ice lines should coincide, and (3) the presence of a substantial amount of methane ice in the trans-Saturnian region. Our results show higher solid surface densities than assumed in the core accretion models of Pollack et al. (1996) by a factor of 3-4 throughout the trans-Saturnian region. We also discuss the location of ice lines and their movement through the solar nebula, and provide new constraints on the possible initial disk configurations from gravitational stability arguments.; Finally, we present a core accretion simulation of Saturn with a planet formation timescale of 3.37 Myr, consistent with observed protostellar disk lifetimes. The protostellar disk model underlying this simulation is also capable of forming Jupiter within 2.5 Myr. We observe a new manifestation of the core accretion theory, in which Saturn's solid core does not reach isolation mass, and argue that this paradigm should apply to Uranus and Neptune as well. The planet formation timescale is then governed primarily by the solid accretion rate instead of the gas contraction efficiency. Our model predicts a core mass of 44M⊕ for Saturn, heavier than inferred from observations by a factor of at least 2. We discuss possible mechanisms for reducing the core size without slowing down formation and comment on the similarity between...