Fig. 3
Mass fraction of the atmospheric loss as a function of non-dimensional atmospheric pressure (σ−1) for the cases of ξ = (a) 100, (b) 500 and (c) 1000 (solid circles and lines). The other parameters λ and ε are fixed to 300 and 2, respectively, through all the calculations in the figures. For asteroid impacts (ρvap = 3000 [kg/m3]) on Mars, the secondary horizontal axis (the upper x-axis) is available to obtain the corresponding values of the atmospheric pressure, in which cases the values of i (100, 500 and 1000) correspond to the values of rvap (vapor radius) 34 [km], 6.8 [km] and 3.4 [km], respectively. Twice the values by the model in Vickery and Melosh (1990) are also plotted with dotted lines to compare the pressure dependence. The downward-arrow on the lower x-axis on each figure shows the threshold atmospheric pressure estimated by Melosh and Vickery (1989), larger than which no atmospheric escape occurs with a given vapor mass.