Mantles of terrestrial planets immediately following magma ocean solidification

Energy of accretion in terrestrial planets is expected to create liquid silicate magma oceans. Their solidification processes create silicate differentiation and set the initial mantle structure for the planet. Solidification results in a compositionally unstable density profile, leading to cumulate Rayleigh-Taylor overturn in the early stages of planetary history. The pattern and timescale of overturn, in which cold, dense surface material sinks to the core mantle boundary, has implications for core dynamo production, volatile escape and fundamental differences between differently-sized bodies. Our fully spherical mantle models reaffirm previous work suggesting harmonic degree of overturn is dependent on viscosity contrast and layer thickness. We then explore the dependence of overturn morphology in the early mantles of Mars, Earth, Mercury and the Moon on these parameters and on the respective planets’ characteristics using a composition- and temperature-dependent viscosity model. Initial results indicate that fractional solidification and overturn in terrestrial planets always creates some radius range in which the mantle is azimuthally compositionally heterogeneous. After overturn, compositional stability in the mantle suppresses the onset of thermal convection; the broad conclusions of this work indicate that the earliest solid mantle of terrestrial planets is compositionally differentiated and stable.