Can Chondrules Be Produced by the Interaction of Jupiter with the Protosolar Disk?

Abstract

Chondrules are crystallized droplets of silicate melt formed by rapid heating to high temperatures (>1800 K) of solid precursors followed by hours or days of cooling. The time interval of chondrule formation is consistent with the formation timescale of Jupiter in the core-accretion model (1–4 Myr). Here we investigate if the shocks generated by a massive planet could generate flash heating episodes necessary to form chondrules using high-resolution 2D simulations with the multifluid code RoSSBi. We use different radiative cooling prescriptions, planet masses, orbits, and disk models. Temperatures reached during flash heating can be deduced from chondrule observations and are achieved in a Minimum Mass Solar Nebula (MMSN) for a massive protoplanet (>0.75 M ♃ ) but only in cases in which radiative cooling is low enough to lead to nearly adiabatic conditions. More realistic thermodynamics undershoot the temperatures required in shocks for chondrule formation. However, these temperatures are reached when considering more massive disks (e.g., five MMSN), but these conditions lead to fast planet migration and too low cooling rates compared to those deduced from chondrule textures. Thus, it seems unlikely that shocks from Jupiter can form chondrules in most cases. Independent of the nebular mass, the simulations demonstrate that a massive planet that forms a gap triggers vortices, which act as dust traps for chondrule precursors. These vortices also provide a high-pressure environment consistent with cosmochemical evidence from chondrules. They only lack the flash heating source for a potential chondrule formation environment.