LIPAD Simulations of Giant Planet Core Formation

We present some preliminary results from our investigation of giant planetary core formation using numerical simulations with the Lagrangian Integrator for Planetary Accretion and Dynamics (LIPAD) by Levison et al. (2012). LIPAD couples dynamics with collisional evolution, including fragmentation. We start with a cold planetesimal disk using particles of a few kilometres in size. Our simulations show growth from kilometre-sized planetesimals to several Earth-mass sized embryos (tens of thousands of kilometers) can occur. However, these embryos may not be large enough to start runaway gas accretion necessary to build the envelopes of gas giant planets.