A Formation-stage Bottleneck for Exomoons around Close-in Rocky Planets

Abstract

Abstract Massive moons around rocky exoplanets are expected outcomes of giant impacts, yet no exomoon has been securely confirmed. We address this problem using meshless finite-mass (MFM) simulations of giant impacts between differentiated rocky planets that include stellar tidal and Coriolis forces in a local corotating frame for orbital periods of 1–300 days, and compare these simulations with otherwise identical collisions in isolation. We find that stellar perturbations impose a severe formation-stage bottleneck on moon-forming disks. Ultra-short-period impacts leave essentially no surviving circumplanetary disk (CPD), whereas 10 day systems retain only strongly depleted, radially truncated, and dynamically compact disks. High impact velocities, expected for close-in planets, are devastating for disk generation, while retrograde impacts can slightly compensate for disk mass depletion. These results show that stellar perturbations can suppress exomoon formation around close-in rocky planets, reshaping expectations for the demographics of exomoons.