A reduced efficiency of terrestrial planet formation following giant planet migration

Abstract

Substantial orbital migration of massive planets may occur in most extrasolar planetary systems. Since migration is likely to occur after a significant fraction of the dust has been locked up into planetesimals, ubiquitous migration could reduce the probability of forming terrestrial planets at radii of the order of 1 au. Using a simple time dependent model for the evolution of gas and solids in the disk, I show that replenishment of solid material in the inner disk, following the inward passage of a giant planet, is generally inefficient. Unless the timescale for diffusion of dust is much shorter than the viscous timescale, or planetesimal formation is surprisingly slow, the surface density of planetesimals at 1 au will typically be depleted by one to two orders of magnitude following giant planet migration. Conceivably, terrestrial planets may exist only in a modest fraction of systems where a single generation of massive planets formed and did not migrate significantly.