Cooling-regulated gas accretion onto gap-opening planets

Abstract

Gas accretion onto forming planets controls the final masses of giant planets and provides observable signatures of ongoing formation. How this process depends on the cooling properties of these newly attracted gas remains poorly constrained. We present long-term, three-dimensional global hydrodynamical simulations to quantify gas accretion onto gap-opening planets in the mass range between 1 and 3 Jupiter masses. We systematically vary the cooling time, $β$, from near-isothermal ($β=10^{-2}$ in units of orbital time) to near-adiabatic ($β=10^{2}$), and follow the evolution until a quasi-steady state is reached. Our simulations show that the gas accretion rate decreases monotonically with increasing $β$, as $\dot{M}_{\rm acc}\proptoβ^{-0.18}$, reaching values at $β=10^2$ that are approximately an order of magnitude lower than locally isothermal predictions, largely independent of planet mass. The reduction in accretion is traced to thermodynamic restructuring of the circumplanetary region: inefficient cooling weakens shocks, narrows the accretion bands feeding the circumplanetary disk. Our results imply that thermodynamic effects should be taken into account when interpreting observed accretion rates of young planets, and may introduce systematic uncertainties in commonly used locally isothermal assumptions.