Growth of Jupiter: Enhancement of core accretion by a voluminous low-mass envelope

We present calculations of the early stages of the formation of Jupiter via core nucleated accretion and gas capture. The core begins as a seed body of about 350 km in radius and orbits in a swarm of planetesimals whose initial radii range from 15 m to 50 km. The evolution of the swarm accounts for growth and fragmentation, viscous and gravitational stirring, and for drag-assisted migration and velocity damping. During this evolution, less than 9% of the mass is in planetesimals smaller than 1 km in radius;≲ 25% is in ...