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Context. Within the core accretion scenario of planetary formation, mostsimulations performed so far always assume the accreting envelope to have asolar composition. From the study of meteorite showers on Earth and numericalsimulations, we know that planetesimals must undergo thermal ablation anddisruption when crossing a protoplanetary envelope. Once the protoplanet hasacquired an atmosphere, the primordial envelope gets enriched in volatiles andsilicates from the planetesimals. This change of envelope composition duringthe formation can have a significant effect in the final atmosphericcomposition and on the formation timescale of giant planets.  Aims. To investigate the physical implications of considering the envelopeenrichment of protoplanets due to the disruption of icy planetesimals duringtheir way to the core. Particular focus is placed on the effect on the criticalcore mass for envelopes where condensation of water can occur.  Methods. Internal structure models are numerically solved with theimplementation of updated opacities for all ranges of metallicities and thesoftware CEA to compute the equation of state. CEA computes the chemicalequilibrium for an arbitrary mixture of gases and allows the condensation ofsome species, including water. This means that the latent heat of phasetransitions is consistently incorporated in the total energy budget.  Results. The critical core mass is found to decrease significantly when anenriched envelope composition is considered in the internal structureequations. A particular strong reduction of the critical core mass is obtainedfor planets whose envelope metallicity is larger than Z=0.45 when the outerboundary conditions are suitable for condensation of water to occur in the toplayers of the atmosphere. We show that this effect is qualitatively preservedwhen the atmosphere is out of chemical equilibrium.

Critical core mass for enriched envelopes: the role of H2O condensation