An Atmospheric Structure Equation for Grain Growth

Abstract

We present a method to include the evolution of the grain size and grain opacity $\kappa_\mathrm{gr}$ in the equations describing the structure of protoplanetary atmospheres. The key assumption of this method is that a single grain size dominates the grain size distribution at any height $r$. In addition to following grain growth, the method accounts for mass deposition by planetesimals and grain porosity. We illustrate this method by computation of a simplified atmosphere structure model. In agreement with previous works, grain coagulation is seen to be very efficient. The opacity drops to values much below the often-used `ISM-opacities' ($\sim$$1\ \mathrm{cm^2\ g}^{-1}$) and the atmosphere structure profiles for temperature and density resemble that of the grain-free case. Deposition of planetesimals in the radiative part of the atmosphere hardly influences this outcome as the added surface is quickly coagulated away. We observe a modest dependence on the internal structure (porosity), but show that filling factors cannot become too large because of compression by gas drag.