Extreme close encounters between proto-Mercury and proto-Venus in terrestrial planet formation

Modern models of terrestrial planet formation require solids depletion interior to 0.5–0.7 au in the planetesimal disc to explain the small mass of Mercury. The Earth and Venus analogues emerge after ∼100 Myr collisional growth, while Mercury forms in the diffusive tails of the planetesimal disc. We carried out 250 N-body simulations of planetesimal discs with mass confined to 0.7–1.0 au to study the statistics of close encounters that were recently proposed as an explanation for the high iron mass fraction in Mercury. We formed 39 Mercury analogues in total and all proto-Mercury analogues were scattered inwards by proto-Venus. Proto-Mercury typically experiences six extreme close encounters (closest approach smaller than six Venus radii) with Proto-Venus after Proto-Venus acquires 0.7 Venus Mass. At such close separation, the tidal interaction can already affect the orbital motion significantly such that the N-body treatment itself is invalid. More and closer encounters are expected should tidal dissipation of orbital angular momentum accounted. Hybrid N-body hydrodynamic simulations, treating orbital and encounter dynamics self-consistently, are desirable to evaluate the degree of tidal mantle stripping of proto-Mercury.