Growth of aggregates with liquid-like ice shells in protoplanetary discs

Abstract

ABSTRACT During the first stages of planet formation, the collision growth of dust aggregates in protoplanetary discs (PPDs) is interrupted at the bouncing barrier. Dust aggregates coated by different species of ice turn out to be helpful to shift the bouncing barrier towards larger sizes due to their enhanced sticking properties in some cases. A rarely noticed fact is that H2O ice and H2O–CH3OH–NH3 ice behave liquid-like when UV irradiated within a PPD-similar environment. Dust aggregates coated by these ice species might be damped in collisions due to the liquid-like ice shell, which would effectively result in an increase of the sticking velocity. In this work, collisions of dust aggregates covered by the liquid-like H2O–CH3OH–NH3 ice shell are considered numerically. The coefficient of restitution and the sticking velocity are calculated for different thicknesses of the ice shell. The simulation predicts that an ice-shell thickness of few microns would be sufficient to allow the growth of cm-sized clusters in the PPD.