Composition of early planetary atmospheres – I. Connecting disc astrochemistry to the formation of planetary atmospheres

We present a model of the early chemical composition and elemental abundances of planetary atmospheres based on the cumulative gaseous chemical species that are accreted on to planets forming by core accretion from evolving protoplanetary discs. The astrochemistry of the host disc is computed using an ionization-driven, non-equilibrium chemistry network within viscously evolving disc models. We accrete gas giant planets whose orbital evolution is controlled by planet traps using the standard core accretion model and track the chemical composition of the material that is accreted on to the protoplanet. We choose a fiducial disc model and evolve planets in three traps – water ice line, dead zone and heat transition. For a disc with a lifetime of 4.1 Myr, we produce two hot Jupiters (M = 1.43, 2.67 MJupiter, r = 0.15, 0.11 au) in the heat transition and ice line trap and one failed core (M = 0.003 MJupiter, r = 3.7 au) in the dead zone. These planets are found with mixing ratios for CO and H2O of 1.99 × 10−4 and 5.0 × 10−4, respectively, for both hot Jupiters. Additionally, for these planets we find CO2 and CH4, with mixing ratios of 1.8 × 10−6 → 9.8 × 10−10 and 1.1 × 10−8 → 2.3 × 10−10, respectively. These ranges correspond well with the mixing ratio ranges that have been inferred through the detection of emission spectra from hot Jupiters by multiple authors. We compute a carbon-to-oxygen ratio of 0.227 for the ice line planet and 0.279 for the heat transition planet. These planets accreted their gas inside the ice line, hence the sub-solar C/O.