Lunar and Terrestrial Planet Formation in the Grand Tack Scenario

Understand

We present conclusions from a large number of N-body simulations of the giant impact phase of terrestrial planet formation.

• We focus on new results obtained from the recently proposed Grand Tack model, which couples the gas-driven migration of giant planets to the accretion of the terrestrial planets.
• The giant impact phase follows the oligarchic growth phase, which builds a bi-modal mass distribution within the disc of embryos and planetesimals.
• By varying the ratio of the total mass in the embryo population to the total mass in the planetesimal population and the mass of the individual embryos, we explore how different disc conditions control the final planets.