PF-06-0016

How the origin of stars in the Galaxy impacts the composition of planetary building blocks?

Nahuel Cabral, Aurelie Guilbert-Lepoutre, Nadege Lagarde


Our Galaxy is composed of different stellar populations which are characterized by different chemical abundances. They are thought to imprint the composition of small bodies formed together with planets : planet building blocks (PBB), asteroids and interstellar objects.

We investigated the expected PBB composition in different Galactic regions using the ground-based spectroscopic surveys GALAH and APOGEE ; and the stoichiometric condensation model from Bitsch & Battistini (2020).

Cabral et al. (2023) confirms the PBB composition valley separating the thin disk stars from the thick disk stars (i.e. a bimodal distribution of compositions) already highlighted in our previous study (Cabral et al. 2019) using the Besançon stellar population synthesis model of the Milky Way. Moreover, we find that metal-poor stars both in the thin and thick disks should host water-rich PBB.

Overall we find that the chemical abundances of host stars should impact the composition of exoplanets, as well as small body populations found around these stars. Our results imply that thick disk stars (which are rather alpha-rich, metal-poor stars) are suitable hosts for ice-rich small bodies.