The Limited Role of the Streaming Instability During Moon and Exomoon Formation

It is generally accepted that the Moon accreted from the disk formed by an impact between the proto-Earth and impactor, but its details are highly debated. Some models suggest that a Mars-sized impactor formed a silicate melt-rich (vapor-poor) disk around Earth, whereas other models suggest that a highly energetic impact produced a silicate vapor-rich disk. Such a vapor-rich disk, however, may not be suitable for the Moon formation, because moonlets, building blocks of the Moon, of 100 m-100 km may experience strong gas drag and fall onto Earth on a short timescale, failing to grow further. This problem may be avoided if large moonlets (≫ 100 km) form very quickly by streaming instability, which is a process to concentrate particles enough to cause gravitational collapse and rapid formation of planetesimals or moonlets. Here, we investigate the effect of the streaming instability in the Moon-forming disk for the first time and find that this instability can quickly form ∼ 100 km-sized moonlets. However, these moonlets are not large enough to avoid strong drag and they still fall onto Earth quickly. This suggests that the vapor-rich disks may not form the large Moon, and therefore the models that produce vapor-poor disks are supported. This result is applicable to general impact-induced moon-forming disks, supporting the previous suggestion that small planets (<1.6 R_⊕) are good candidates to host large moons because their impact-induced disks would be likely vapor-poor. We find a limited role of streaming instability in a satellite formation in an impact-induced disk, whereas it plays a key role during planet formation.