arXiv subjects

Hidenori Genda

Publications and source records attributed to Hidenori Genda.

49 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

On the impact origin of Phobos and Deimos III: resulting composition from different impactors

The origin of Phobos and Deimos in a giant impact generated disk is gaining larger attention. Although this scenario has been the subject of many studies, an evaluation of the chemical composition of the Mars' moons in this framework is missing. The chemical composition of Phobos and Deimos is unconstrained. The large uncertainty about the origin of the mid-infrared features, the lack of absorption bands in the visible and near-infrared spectra, and the effects of secondary processes on the moons' surface make the determination of their composition very difficult from remote sensing data. Simulations suggest a formation of a disk made of gas and melt with their composition linked to the nature of the impactor and Mars. Using thermodynamic equilibrium we investigate the composition of dust (condensates from gas) and solids (from a cooling melt) that result from different types of Mars impactors (Mars-, CI-, CV-, EH-, comet-like). Our calculations show a wide range of possible chemical compositions and noticeable differences between dust and solids depending on the considered impactors. Assuming Phobos and Deimos as result of the accretion and mixing of dust and solids, we find that the derived assemblage (dust rich in metallic-iron, sulphides and/or carbon, and quenched solids rich in silicates) can be compatible with the observations. The JAXA's MMX (Martian Moons eXploration) mission will investigate the physical and chemical properties of the Maroons, especially sampling from Phobos, before returning to Earth. Our results could be then used to disentangle the origin and chemical composition of the pristine body that hit Mars and suggest guidelines for helping in the analysis of the returned samples.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2017

On the Impact Origin of Phobos and Deimos II: True Polar Wander and Disk Evolution

Phobos and Deimos are the two small Martian moons, orbiting almost on the equatorial plane of Mars. Recent works have shown that they can accrete within an impact-generated inner dense and outer light disk, and that the same impact potentially forms the Borealis basin, a large northern hemisphere basin on the current Mars. However, there is no a priori reason for the impact to take place close to the north pole (Borealis present location) nor to generate a debris disk in the equatorial plane of Mars (in which Phobos and Deimos orbit). In this paper, we investigate these remaining issues on the giant impact origin of the Martian moons. First, we show that the mass deficit created by the Borealis impact basin induces a global reorientation of the planet to realign its main moment of inertia with the rotation pole (True Polar Wander). This moves the location of the Borealis basin toward its current location. Next, using analytical arguments, we investigate the detailed dynamical evolution of the eccentric inclined disk from the equatorial plane of Mars that is formed by the Martian-moon-forming impact. We find that, as a result of precession of disk particles due to the Martian dynamical flattening $J_{2}$ term of its gravity field and particle-particle inelastic collisions, eccentricity and inclination are damped and an inner dense and outer light equatorial circular disk is eventually formed. Our results strengthen the giant impact origin of Phobos and Deimos that can finally be tested by a future sample return mission such as JAXA's Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2017

Hydrocode modeling of the spallation process during hypervelocity impacts: Implications for the ejection of Martian meteorites

Hypervelocity ejection of material by impact spallation is considered a plausible mechanism for material exchange between two planetary bodies. We have modeled the spallation process during vertical impacts over a range of impact velocities from 6 to 21 km/s using both grid- and particle-based hydrocode models. The Tillotson equations of state, which are able to treat the nonlinear dependence of density on pressure and thermal pressure in the strongly shocked matter, were used to study the hydrodynamic and thermodynamic response after impacts. The effects of material strength and gravitational acceleration were not considered. A two-dimensional time-dependent pressure field within a 1.5-fold projectile radius from the impact point was investigated in cylindrical coordinates to address the generation of spalled material. A resolution test was also performed to reject ejected materials with peak pressures that were too low due to artificial viscosity. The relationship between ejection velocity veject and peak pressure Ppeak was also derived. Our approach shows that late stage acceleration in an ejecta curtain occurs due to the compressible nature of the ejecta, resulting in an ejection velocity that can be higher than the ideal maximum of the resultant particle velocity after passage of a shock wave. We also calculate the ejecta mass that can escape from a planet like Mars (i.e., veject higher than 5 km/s) that matches the petrographic constraints from Martian meteorites, and which occurs when Ppeak from 30-50 GPa. Although the mass of such ejecta is limited to from 0.1-1 percent of the projectile mass in vertical impacts, this is sufficient for spallation to have been a plausible mechanism for the ejection of Martian meteorites. Finally, we propose that impact spallation is a plausible mechanism for the generation of tektites.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2017

On the Impact Origin of Phobos and Deimos I: Thermodynamic and Physical Aspects

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 $\sim 2000$ K in temperature) with an entropy increase of $\sim 1500$ J K$^{-1}$ kg$^{-1}$. Thus, the disk material should be mostly molten, though a tiny fraction of disk material ($< 5\%$) would even experience vaporization. Typically, a piece of molten disk material is estimated to be meter sized due to the fragmentation regulated by their shear velocity and surface tension during the impact process. The disk materials initially have highly eccentric orbits ($e \sim 0.6-0.9$) and successive collisions between meter-sized fragments at high impact velocity ($\sim 3-5$ km s$^{-1}$) can grind them down to $\sim100 μ$m-sized particles. On the other hand, a tiny amount of vaporized disk material condenses into $\sim 0.1 μ$m-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 $\sim 100 μ$m-sized particles and $\sim 0.1 μ$m-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.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2017

Ejection of iron-bearing giant-impact fragments and the dynamical and geochemical influence of the fragment re-accretion

The Earth was born in violence. Many giant collisions of protoplanets are thought to have occurred during the terrestrial planet formation. Here we investigated the giant impact stage by using a hybrid code that consistently deals with the orbital evolution of protoplanets around the Sun and the details of processes during giant impacts between two protoplanets. A significant amount of materials (up to several tens of percent of the total mass of the protoplanets) is ejected by giant impacts. We call these ejected fragments the giant-impact fragments (GIFs). In some of the erosive hit-and-run and high-velocity collisions, metallic iron is also ejected, which comes from the colliding protoplanets' cores. From ten numerical simulations for the giant impact stage, we found that the mass fraction of metallic iron in GIFs ranges from ~ 1wt% to ~ 25wt%. We also discussed the effects of the GIFs on the dynamical and geochemical characteristics of formed terrestrial planets. We found that the GIFs have the potential to solve the following dynamical and geochemical conflicts: (1) The Earth, currently in a near circular orbit, is likely to have had a highly eccentric orbit during the giant impact stage. The GIFs are large enough in total mass to lower the eccentricity of the Earth to its current value via their dynamical friction. (2) The concentrations of highly siderophile elements (HSEs) in the Earth's mantle are greater than what was predicted experimentally. Re-accretion of the iron-bearing GIFs onto the Earth can contribute to the excess of HSEs. In addition, the estimated amount of iron-bearing GIFs provides significant reducing agent that could transform primitive CO2-H2O atmosphere and ocean into more reducing H2-bearing atmosphere. Thus, GIFs are important for the origin of Earth's life and its early evolution.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2016

Ring Formation around Giant Planets by Tidal Disruption of a Single Passing Large Kuiper Belt Object

The origin of rings around giant planets remains elusive. Saturn's rings are massive and made of 90-95% of water ice. In contrast, the much less massive rings of Uranus and Neptune are dark and likely to have higher rock fraction. Here we investigate, for the first time, the tidal disruption of a passing object, including the subsequent formation of planetary rings. First, we perform SPH simulations of the tidal destruction of big differentiated objects ($M_{\rm body}=10^{21-23}$) that experience close encounters with Saturn or Uranus. We find that about $0.1-10$% of the mass of the passing body is gravitationally captured around the planet. However, these fragments are initially big chunks and have highly eccentric orbits around the planet. Then, we perform N-body simulations including the planet's oblateness, starting with data obtained from the SPH simulations. Our N-body simulations show that the chunks are tidally destroyed during their next several orbits. Their individual orbits then start to precess incoherently around the planet's equator, which enhances their encounter velocities on longer-term evolution, resulting in more destructive impacts. These collisions would damp their eccentricities resulting in a progressive collapse of the debris cloud into a thin equatorial and low-eccentricity ring. These high energy impacts are expected to be catastrophic enough to produce small particles. Our numerical results also show that the mass of formed rings is large enough to explain current rings including inner regular satellites around Saturn and Uranus. In the case of Uranus, a body can go deeper inside the planet's Roche limit resulting in a more efficient capture of rocky material compared to Saturn's case in which mostly ice is captured. Thus, our results can naturally explain the compositional difference between the rings of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2016

Formation of Centaurs' rings through their partial tidal disruption during planetary encounters

Centaurs are minor planets orbiting between Jupiter and Neptune that have or had crossing orbits with one or more giant planets. Recent observations and reinterpretation of previous observations have revealed the existence of ring systems around 10199 Chariklo and 2060 Chiron. However, the origin of the ring systems around such a minor planet is still an open question. Here, we propose that the tidal disruption of a differentiated object that experiences a close encounter with a giant planet could naturally form diverse ring-satellite systems around the Centaurs. During the close encounter, the icy mantle of the passing object is preferentially ripped off by the planet's tidal force and the debris is distributed mostly within the Roche limit of the largest remnant body. Assuming the existence of $20-50$wt% silicate core below the icy mantle, a disk of particles is formed when the objects pass within $0.4-0.8$ of the planet's Roche limit with the relative velocity at infinity $3-6$km s$^{-1}$ and 8h initial spin period of the body. The resultant ring mass is $0.1-10$% of the central object's mass. Such particle disks are expected to spread radially, and materials spreading beyond the Roche limit would accrete into satellite(s). Our numerical results suggest that ring formation would be a natural outcome of such extreme close encounters and Centaurs can naturally have such ring systems because they cross the orbits of the giant planets.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2016

The Giant Impact Simulations with Density Independent Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

At present, the giant impact (GI) is the most widely accepted model for the origin of the Moon. Most of the numerical simulations of GI have been carried out with the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method. Recently, however, it has been pointed out that standard formulation of SPH (SSPH) has difficulties in the treatment of a contact discontinuity such as a core-mantle boundary and a free surface such as a planetary surface. This difficulty comes from the assumption of differentiability of density in SSPH. We have developed an alternative formulation of SPH, density independent SPH (DISPH), which is based on differentiability of pressure instead of density to solve the problem of a contact discontinuity. In this paper, we report the results of the GI simulations with DISPH and compare them with those obtained with SSPH. We found that the disk properties, such as mass and angular momentum produced by DISPH is different from that of SSPH. In general, the disks formed by DISPH are more compact: while formation of a smaller mass moon for low-oblique impacts is expected with DISPH, inhibition of ejection would promote formation of a larger mass moon for high-oblique impacts. Since only the improvement of core-mantle boundary significantly affects the properties of circumplanetary disks generated by GI and DISPH has not been significantly improved from SSPH for a free surface, we should be very careful when some conclusions are drawn from the numerical simulations for GI. And it is necessary to develop the numerical hydrodynamical scheme for GI that can properly treat the free surface as well as the contact discontinuity.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2015

Formation of Phobos and Deimos via a Giant Impact

Although the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, have long been thought to be captured asteroids, recent observations of their compositions and orbits suggest that they may have formed from debris generated by one or more giant impacts of bodies with ~ 0.01 x target mass. Recent studies have both analytically estimated debris produced by giant impacts on Mars and numerically examined the evolution of circum-Mars debris disks. We perform a numerical study (Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics simulation) of debris retention from giant impacts onto Mars, particularly in relation to a Borealis-scale giant impact (E ~ 3 x 10^29 J) capable of producing the Borealis basin. We find that a Borealis-scale impact is capable of producing a disk of mass ~ 5 x 10^20 kg (~ 1 - 4 % of the impactor mass), sufficient debris to form at least one of the martian moons according to recent numerical studies of martian debris disk evolution. While a Borealis-scale impact may generate sufficient debris to form both Phobos and Deimos, further studies of the debris disk evolution are necessary. Our results can serve as inputs for future studies of martian debris disk evolution.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2011

Giant impacts in the Saturnian System: a possible origin of diversity in the inner mid-sized satellites

It is widely accepted that Titan and the mid-sized regular satellites around Saturn were formed in the circum-Saturn disk. Thus, if these mid-sized satellites were simply accreted by collisions of similar ice-rock satellitesimals in the disk, the observed wide diversity in density (i.e., the rock fraction) of the Saturnian mid-sized satellites is enigmatic. A recent circumplanetary disk model suggests satellite growth in an actively supplied circumplanetary disk, in which Titan-sized satellites migrate inward by interaction with the gas and are eventually lost to the gas planet. Here we report numerical simulations of giant impacts between Titan-sized migrating satellites and smaller satellites in the inner region of the Saturnian disk. Our results suggest that in a giant impact with impact velocity > 1.4 times the escape velocity and impact angle of ~45 degree, a smaller satellite is destroyed, forming multiple mid-sized satellites with a very wide diversity in satellite density (the rock fraction = 0-92 wt%). Our results of the relationship between the mass and rock fraction of the satellites resulting from giant impacts reproduce the observations of the Saturnian mid-sized satellites. Giant impacts also lead to internal melting of the formed mid-sized satellites, which would initiate strong tidal dissipation and geological activity, such as those observed on Enceladus today and Tethys in the past. Our findings also imply that giant impacts might have affected the fundamental physical property of the Saturnian mid-sized satellites as well as those of the terrestrial planets in the solar system and beyond.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2010

Formation of Terrestrial Planets from Protoplanets under a Realistic Accretion Condition

The final stage of terrestrial planet formation is known as the giant impact stage where protoplanets collide with one another to form planets. So far this stage has been mainly investigated by N-body simulations with an assumption of perfect accretion in which all collisions lead to accretion. However, this assumption breaks for collisions with high velocity and/or a large impact parameter. We derive an accretion condition for protoplanet collisions in terms of impact velocity and angle and masses of colliding bodies, from the results of numerical collision experiments. For the first time, we adopt this realistic accretion condition in N-body simulations of terrestrial planet formation from protoplanets. We compare the results with those with perfect accretion and show how the accretion condition affects terrestrial planet formation. We find that in the realistic accretion model, about half of collisions do not lead to accretion. However, the final number, mass, orbital elements, and even growth timescale of planets are barely affected by the accretion condition. For the standard protoplanetary disk model, typically two Earth-sized planets form in the terrestrial planet region over about 100 M years in both realistic and perfect accretion models. We also find that for the realistic accretion model, the spin angular velocity is about 30% smaller than that for the perfect accretion model that is as large as the critical spin angular velocity for rotational instability. The spin angular velocity and obliquity obey Gaussian and isotropic distributions, respectively, independently of the accretion condition.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2007

Origin of the Ocean on the Earth: Early Evolution of Water D/H in a Hydrogen-rich Atmosphere

The origin of the Earth's ocean has been discussed on the basis of deuterium/hydrogen ratios (D/H) of several sources of water in the solar system. The average D/H of carbonaceous chondrites (CC's) is known to be close to the current D/H of the Earth's ocean, while those of comets and the solar nebula are larger by about a factor of two and smaller by about a factor of seven, respectively, than that of the Earth's ocean. Thus, the main source of the Earth's ocean has been thought to be CC's or adequate mixing of comets and the solar nebula. However, those conclusions are correct only if D/H of water on the Earth has remained unchanged for the past 4.5 Gyr. In this paper, we investigate evolution of D/H in the ocean in the case that the early Earth had a hydrogen-rich atmosphere, the existence of which is predicted by recent theories of planet formation no matter whether the nebula remains or not. Then we show that D/H in the ocean increases by a factor of 2-9, which is caused by the mass fractionation during atmospheric hydrogen loss, followed by deuterium exchange between hydrogen gas and water vapor during ocean formation. This result suggests that the apparent similarity in D/H of water between CC's and the current Earth's ocean does not necessarily support the CC's origin of water and that the apparent discrepancy in D/H is not a good reason for excluding the nebular origin of water.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2006

Constraints on the mass of a habitable planet with water of nebular origin

From an astrobiological point of view, special attention has been paid to the probability of habitable planets in extrasolar systems. The purpose of this study is to constrain a possible range of the mass of a terrestrial planet that can get water. We focus on the process of water production through oxidation of the atmospheric hydrogen--the nebular gas having been attracted gravitationally--by oxide available at the planetary surface. For the water production to work well on a planet, a sufficient amount of hydrogen and enough high temperature to melt the planetary surface are needed. We have simulated the structure of the atmosphere that connects with the protoplanetary nebula for wide ranges of heat flux, opacity, and density of the nebular gas. We have found both requirements are fulfilled for an Earth-mass planet for wide ranges of the parameters. We have also found the surface temperature of planets of <= 0.3 Earth masses is lower than the melting temperature of silicate (~ 1500K). On the other hand, a planet of more than several Earth masses becomes a gas giant planet through runaway accretion of the nebular gas.

astro-ph↗