RYUKI HYODO

Around the snow line, icy pebbles and silicate dust may locally pile-up and form icy and rocky planetesimals via streaming instability and/or gravitational instability. We perform 1D diffusion-advection simulations that include the back-reaction to radial drift and diffusion of icy pebbles and silicate dust, ice sublimation, release of silicate dust, and their recycling through recondensation and sticking onto pebbles outside the snow line. We use a realistic description of the scale height of silicate dust obtained from Ida et al. and that of pebbles including the effects of a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. We study the dependence of solid pile-up on distinct effective viscous parameters for turbulent diffusions in the radial and vertical directions ($\alpha_{\rm Dr}$ and $\alpha_{\rm Dz}$) and for the gas accretion to the star ($\alpha_{\rm acc}$) as well as that on the pebble-to-gas mass flux ($F_{\rm p/g}$). We derive the sublimation width of drifting icy pebbles which is a critical parameter to characterize the pile-up of silicate dust and pebbles around the snow line. We identify a parameter space (in the $F_{\rm p/g}-\alpha_{\rm acc}-\alpha_{\rm Dz}(=\alpha_{\rm Dr})$ space) where pebbles no longer drift inward to reach the snow line due to the back-reaction that slows down radial velocity of pebbles. We show that the pile-up of solids around the snow line occurs in a broader range of parameters for $\alpha_{\rm acc}=10^{-3}$ than for $\alpha_{\rm acc}=10^{-2}$. Above a critical $F_{\rm p/g}$ value, the runaway pile-up of silicate dust inside the snow line is favored for $\alpha_{\rm Dr}/\alpha_{\rm acc} \ll 1$, while that of pebbles outside the snow line is favored for $\alpha_{\rm Dr}/\alpha_{\rm acc} \sim 1$. Our results imply that a distinct evolutionary path could produce a diversity of outcomes in terms of planetesimal formation around the snow line.

Throughout the history of the solar system, Mars has experienced continuous asteroidal impacts. These impacts have produced impact-generated Mars ejecta, and a fraction of this debris is delivered to Earth as Martian meteorites. Another fraction of the ejecta is delivered to the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. Here, we studied the amount and condition of recent delivery of impact ejecta from Mars to its moons. Using state-of-the-art numerical approaches, we report, for the first time, that materials delivered from Mars to its moons are physically and chemically different from the Martian meteorites, which are all igneous rocks with a limited range of ages. We show that Mars ejecta mixed in the regolith of its moons potentially covers all its geological eras and consists of all types of rocks, from sedimentary to igneous. A Martian moons sample-return mission will bring such materials back to Earth, and the samples will provide a wealth of "time-resolved" geochemical information about the evolution of Martian surface environments.

Phobos and Deimos are the two small moons of Mars. Recent works have shown that they can accrete within an impact-generated disk. However, the detailed structure and initial thermodynamic properties of the disk are poorly understood. In this paper, we perform high-resolution SPH simulations of the Martian moon-forming giant impact that can also form the Borealis basin. This giant impact heats up the disk material (around ∼2000 K in temperature) with an entropy increase of ∼1500 J K-1 kg-1. Thus, the disk material should be mostly molten, though a tiny fraction of disk material () would even experience vaporization. Typically, a piece of molten disk material is estimated to be meter sized owing to the fragmentation regulated by their shear velocity and surface tension during the impact process. The disk materials initially have highly eccentric orbits (e ∼ 0.6-0.9), and successive collisions between meter-sized fragments at high impact velocity (∼1-5 km s-1) can grind them down to ∼100 μm sized particles. On the other hand, a tiny amount of vaporized disk material condenses into ∼0.1 μm sized grains. Thus, the building blocks of the Martian moons are expected to be a mixture of these different sized particles from meter-sized down to ∼100 μm sized particles and ∼0.1 μm sized grains. Our simulations also suggest that the building blocks of Phobos and Deimos contain both impactor and Martian materials (at least 35%), most of which come from the Martian mantle (50-150 km in depth at least 50%). Our results will give useful information for planning a future sample return mission to Martian moons, such as JAXA's MMX (Martian Moons eXploration) mission.

Saturn's F ring is a narrow ring of icy particles, located 3,400 km beyond the outer edge of the main ring system. Enigmatically, the F ring is accompanied on either side by two small satellites, Prometheus and Pandora, which are called shepherd satellites. The inner regular satellites of giant planets are thought to form by the accretion of particles from an ancient massive ring and subsequent outward migration. However, the origin of a system consisting of a narrow ring and shepherd satellites remains poorly understood. Here we present N-body numerical simulations to show that a collision of two of the small satellites that are thought to accumulate near the main ring's outer edge can produce a system similar to the F ring and its shepherd satellites. We find that if the two rubble-pile satellites have denser cores, such an impact results in only partial disruption of the satellites and the formation of a narrow ring of particles between two remnant satellites. Our simulations suggest that the seemingly unusual F ring system is a natural outcome at the final stage of the formation process of the ring-satellite system of giant planets.