Abstract
Non-ice impurities within the ice shells of ocean worlds (e.g., Europa,
Enceladus, Titan) are believed to play a fundamental role in their
geophysics and habitability and may become a surface expression of
subsurface ocean properties. Heterogeneous entrainment and distribution
of impurities within planetary ice shells have been proposed as
mechanisms that can drive ice shell overturn, generate diverse
geological features, and facilitate ocean-surface material transport
critical for maintaining a habitable subsurface ocean. However, current
models of ice shell composition suggest that impurity rejection at the
ice-ocean interface of thick contemporary ice shells will be
exceptionally efficient, resulting in relatively pure, homogeneous ice.
As such, additional mechanisms capable of facilitating enhanced and
heterogeneous impurity entrainment are needed to reconcile the observed
physicochemical diversity of planetary ice shells. Here we investigate
the potential for hydrologic features within planetary ice shells (sills
and basal fractures), and the unique freezing geometries they promote,
to provide such a mechanism. By simulating the two-dimensional thermal
and physicochemical evolution of these hydrological features as they
solidify, we demonstrate that bottom-up solidification at sill floors
and horizontal solidification at fracture walls generate distinct ice
compositions and provide mechanisms for both enhanced and heterogeneous
impurity entrainment. We compare our results with magmatic and
metallurgic analogs that exhibit similar micro- and macroscale chemical
zonation patterns during solidification. Our results suggest variations
in ice-ocean/brine interface geometry could play a fundamental role in
introducing compositional heterogeneities into planetary ice shells and
cryoconcentrating impurities in (re)frozen hydrologic features.