Elasticity of a Sintered Contact between Dust Grains

The collisional growth of dust grains in a protoplanetary nebula is impacted by sintering because this increases the elasticity of the neck between dust grains. The high elasticity of a neck can lead to bouncing and not sticking of dust aggregates. This hinders the formation of planetesimals, and dust aggregates accumulate at a particular location in a protoplanetary nebula. Following sintering, the key parameter is the elasticity of a neck between dust grains. This study determined elasticity using numerical simulation and laboratory experiments. Elasticity was substantially smaller than that of a previous model, in which it was assumed that only the neck between grains was deformed. However, the results of this study demonstrated a change is negligible in the sticking efficiency of sintered dust aggregates compared to the results in a previous study.