Re-accretion of giant impact ejecta can drive significant atmospheric erosion on terrestrial planets

ABSTRACT Giant impacts, the collisions between planetary embryos, play a crucial role in sculpting the planets and their orbital architectures. Numerical simulations have advanced our understanding of these events, enabling estimations of mass and atmospheric loss during the primary impacts. However, high computational costs have restricted investigations to the immediate aftermath, limiting our understanding of the longer term consequences. In this study, we investigate the effect of re-accretion of giant impact debris, a process previously overlooked, on the atmospheres of terrestrial planets. Following the collisional and dynamical evolution of the debris ejected during the primary impacts, we quantify the amount of debris that would be re-accreted by the progenitor. We find that $\sim 0.003\, {\rm M_{\oplus }}$ would be re-accreted over a wide range of Earth-like planet properties, assuming 1 per cent of their mass is ejected as non-vapourized debris. Over a prolonged period, the secondary impacts during re-accretion drive enhanced atmospheric loss. Notably, the impacts from the debris of the canonical Moon-forming impact would have gradually eroded an atmosphere similar to present-day Earth’s in $\sim 30$ Myr. More generally, any planet growing via giant impacts within $2\ {\rm au}$ is likely to experience significant post-impact atmospheric erosion unless the initial atmosphere was at least five times more massive than Earth’s. Our results highlight the crucial role secondary impacts from giant-impact ejecta could have in driving the long-term atmospheric evolution of Earth-like planets, and demonstrate that giant impacts can be significantly more effective at eroding such atmospheres than previously thought, when re-accretion of debris is considered.